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June 21, 2016 at 09:15 AM
(Bloomberg) — Residents of Southern California and the Southwest were looking for a break after some of the hottest weather in decades had utilities warning of potential power failures and cities opening pools and cooling centers to those in need of relief.
Related: LTCI Watch: Communications
At least four hikers died in Arizona, where on Sunday Phoenix set a record for the date of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 Celsius), AccuWeather Inc. reported. It was 109 in Burbank, California, on Sunday, besting the mark set in 1973, and temperatures there reached another daily record of 108 at midday Monday, the first day of summer.
The National Weather Service posted excessive heat warnings across Southern California, southern Arizona and into central Utah. The heat was forecast to begin tapering off Tuesday.
“It’s going to cool off noticeably,” Ken Clark, a meteorologist at State College, Pennsylvania-based AccuWeather, said in a telephone interview. Many places in the Los Angeles basin area are going to be 10 to 15 degrees cooler, he said.
Conservation urged
California’s main grid operator called on residents to turn off unneeded lights and avoid using major appliances to prevent blackouts. Los Angeles and other cities opened public libraries and senior centers to those in need of cooling. In Riverside, the city started operating water splash areas in public parks that had been shut because of an unprecedented drought that the region has been battling in recent years.
The heat wave will be the first big test of the Southern California grid after a historic natural gas leak that resulted in constrained supplies of the power plant fuel. The state has warned that the region risks as many as 14 days of blackouts this summer due to the leak. The use of Sempra Energy’s Aliso Canyon storage facility has been restricted since methane spewed uncontrollably from a broken well for nearly four months starting in October.
“We are confident we have a strong plan in place to meet the operational challenges posed by the upcoming hot temperatures,” California Independent System Operator’s chief executive officer, Steve Berberich, said in a statement. “Conservation efforts by consumers are key to reducing stress on the system and to help avoid service disruptions.”
Peak demand
California’s electricity demand had risen to as high as 44,467 megawatts on Monday and was forecast to climb even higher to 45,429 megawatts on Tuesday, California ISO said on its website at 4:50 p.m. local time. The all-time record peak of 50,270 megawatts was set in July 2006.
Spot electricity prices in Southern California surged amid the heat, and wholesale natural gas there traded at a premium of more than 22 cents per million British thermal units versus the benchmark Henry Hub on Monday, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
