By Leila Radwan 

SAN JOSE, CALIF — On Tuesday September 7, 2022, the California grid was on the verge of rotating power outages, due to the enormous burden the grid was under trying to keep up with the air conditioning needs, but was ultimately skimmed off without it. 

With the historic heat wave California has been experiencing, everyone is doing their best trying to stay cool these last couple of weeks, and by staying cool it meants blasting their AC on full blast. On Tuesday, California’s electricity demand hit a new record, driving the power grid closer and closer to overloading, more than its been the last 2 years, causing power outages all over the bay. This makes it a lot harder to escape the heat. 

Officials promise to convey information better to prevent further unexpected power outages that affect California residents Tuesday night.

Though some neighborhoods in Northern California did experience power outages on Tuesday, which were due to a miscommunication between utility group and the California Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s electricity grid. 

Three cities in Northern California, Palo Alto, Healdsburg, and Almaden instigated rolling blackouts Tuesday night. All three cities are a part of a non-profit joint power authority, known as the NCPA (Northern California Power Agency). 

Elliot Mainzer, California’s Independent systems operator CEO, stated Wednesday that the power outages in those cities were not due to the grid operator but from confusion and misunderstanding from the NCPA. Manizer said, “These are situations that obviously happened very infrequently, and there was a lot happening on the grid for everybody last night. So, we’ll double down on the communication to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” 

If you want to help to prevent any more power outages, try by turning off any electricity when not in use. That can include the light, appliances, and keeping your AC off the majority of the time.