For the first time in years, California's peak electricity use has dropped. After a summer of emergency alerts, near blackouts and pleas for conservation, California ended the air-conditioning season without ever passing the record set last year for the most megawatts zipping over electric lines.
Peaks force power plants, transmission lines and substations to work their hardest.
If anything, it is peak usage, coupled with dwindling power imports, that is likeliest to push California over the brink to forced blackouts next summer. No one knows for sure how the region and state managed to lower peak use when electricity consumption is on track to set new records this year. But whatever deflated the summer's peaks could come in even handier next year when a steep shortfall in electric supply is forecast. Calvert believes Sacramentans sat up and noticed when the Bay Area was struck with rolling blackouts June 14, even though that wasn't directly related to looming statewide power shortages. Seeing it happen, where you had actual rotating blackouts in San Francisco, it made the problem a lot more realistic to people.