- U.S.Bloomberg
Two Million Californians Go Dark and the Heat Is Just Beginning
(Bloomberg) -- As many as two million Californians were plunged into darkness over the course of four hours late Friday in the first rolling blackouts to hit the state since the 2001 energy crisis.And that was only Day One. A relentless heat wave is expected to blanket California through the middle of next week, sending temperatures soaring past 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) in some parts. People blasting their air conditioners and fans to keep cool are straining the region’s power system and raising the specter of a repeat of Friday’s sudden and largely unannounced outages.It started at about 6:30 p.m. local time on Friday, when California’s grid operator determined through a complex calculation that the state’s power reserves had fallen below a critical threshold and called a Stage 3 grid emergency, which triggers what it describes as “load interruption.” The last time such a declaration was made during the 2000 and 2001 electricity crisis, hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses took turns being plunged into darkness, power prices surged to a record and the state’s largest utility was forced into bankruptcy.“We had an energy shortfall,” Anne Gonzales, a spokeswoman for grid manager California Independent System Operator, said in a phone interview late Friday. The agency put the call out to the state’s utilities to cut demand by about 1,000 megawatts. That’s enough to power about 750,000 homes, by California ISO’s estimates, affecting well over 2 million people based on the average household size.The heat and the blackouts are hitting at an especially vulnerable time for the region with the pandemic forcing people to remain at home. They’re also coming less than a year after utilities in the region deliberately cut off power to millions of customers in an effort to prevent their power lines from igniting wildfires amid unusually strong winds -- another consequence of increasingly extreme weather brought on in part by climate change.Widespread HeatRegions around the world have been grappling with extreme heat in recent weeks. What was forecast as one of the worst heat waves in more than a century gripped parts of Europe in August. The eastern U.S. is just emerging from July temperatures that were expected to topple daily records in Manhattan and Boston dating to the 19th century. But few, if any, have had to resort to the rotating outages that California orchestrated late Friday.The bulk of the shutoffs came from PG&E Corp. The state’s biggest utility said it expected as many as 250,000 customers to be shut off in rolling outages, with power to be fully restored by 11 p.m. “Unfortunately, because of the emergency nature of this, we weren’t able to notify customers in advance,” Jeff Smith, a company spokesman, said in a telephone interview. The outages occurred for 60 to 90 minutes on a rotating basis through the utility’s Northern and Central California service territory, he said.Edison International’s Southern California Edison utility began shutting off customers shortly before 7 p.m., with about 132,000 powerless as of 7:45 p.m. “It’s happening pretty fast,” said spokesman David Song. Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas & Electric utility said shutoffs were “widespread” across its territory in San Diego and southern Orange counties.Temperatures climbed to a record in parts of the Bay Area on Friday, according to the National Weather Service, with San Francisco reaching 95 degrees Fahrenheit and San Jose at 103.California won’t see a respite from the high temperatures until later next week, based on National Weather Service forecasts. The weather agency had posted excessive heat warnings for much of California from Friday through Wednesday.Electricity prices have already hit two-year highs as weather forecasters called for extreme temperatures. Spot power prices surged past $1,000 a megawatt-hour across California on Friday evening. Natural gas prices in Southern California more than doubled on the increased need for the fuel for power production, according to report from BloombergNEF.Grid operators will continue to monitor the situation throughout the weekend and into next week, Gonzales said. The odds of rolling outages on Saturday and Sunday might prove lower as demand is typically weaker outside of work hours. Asked whether the California ISO will need to call for additional power shutoffs, she said: “We don’t expect one, but we are prepared for one.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- PoliticsYahoo Money
How much are Sen. Kamala Harris and her husband worth?
Harris is a bonafide millionaire and part of the rarefied 1% of U.S. households in income. Here’s what we know about her personal finances.
- PoliticsThe Independent
‘Trump may be crazy, but he’s not stupid’: Bernie Sanders lashes out at president’s opposition to funding postal service
Senator Bernie Sanders has hit out at Donald Trump’s opposition to provide funding for the US Postal Service, claiming he is attempting to “suppress” the US vote in November’s election.Mr Trump, who has been a vocal critic of the use of widespread mail-in voting amidst the coronavirus pandemic, said on Thursday that he opposes the provision of funding for the service proposed by Democrats.
- SportsYahoo Sports
Cowboys' DeMarcus Lawrence says pregnant wife made call to not opt out
After speculation that he wouldn't play, DeMarcus Lawrence said that his wife made the call to not opt out.
- CelebrityE!
Khloe Kardashian Debuts Chic New Hairstyle Alongside Tristan Thompson After Kylie Jenner's Birthday Trip
Keeping Up With the Kardashians star Khloe Kardashian sported a new 'do while arriving back from Turks and Caicos.
- CelebrityHouse Beautiful
Jonathan Scott Shares an Adorable Back-to-School Throwback Photo of the Property Brothers
This pair had style since the very beginning.
- HealthEat This, Not That!
Dr. Fauci Just Warned of This 'Very Disturbing' COVID Symptom
Fever or chills, dry cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, loss of sense of smell and taste. These are just a few of the scary symptoms that people infected with COVID-19 are reporting. Usually it takes a few weeks—or even more than a month—for these manifestations of the highly infectious virus to subside. Most people do get better. However, there are some people who are battling symptoms of the virus log after the infection subsides, a phenomenon that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, deems "very disturbing." He's Concerned for 'Long-Haulers'During an Instagram interview with actor and UT Austin Professor Matthew McConaughe on Thursday, the NIH Director expressed his concern about what the group of people the medical world has come to describe as "long haulers." "We're starting to see more and more people who apparently recover from the actual viral part of it, and then weeks later, they feel weak, they feel tired, they feel sluggish, they feel short of breath," Fauci, a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, explained. Read all 98 Symptoms Coronavirus Patients Say They've Had right here."It's a chronic projection forward of symptoms, even though the virus is gone, and we think that's probably an immunological effect."RELATED: The CDC Just Announced You Shouldn't Wear These MasksHe admitted that although health experts are researching the phenomenon and learning more about it every week, they are still puzzled why some people are left with these puzzling symptoms, while others make a complete recovery. "It's very disturbing, because if this is true for a lot of people, then just recovering from this may not be OK." The CDC Confirms His WorriesIn late July, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report confirming that thirty-five percent of coronavirus sufferers surveyed by the agency were still experiencing its wrath two to three weeks after testing positive for the virus. An interesting aspect of their study is that they only surveyed individuals with the virus who hadn't been admitted into a hospital, signifying a seemingly milder infection. Additionally, those who reported lingering symptoms weren't just older people. 26% of those between the ages of 18 to 34 and 32% of those 35 to 49 reported longer term symptoms. "COVID-19 can result in prolonged illness even among persons with milder outpatient illness, including young adults," the report's authors wrote. Until a vaccine is widely available, do everything you can to prevent getting—and spreading—COVID-19: Wear a face mask, get tested if you think you have coronavirus, avoid crowds (and bars, and house parties), practice social distancing, only run essential errands, wash your hands regularly, disinfect frequently touched surfaces, and to get through this pandemic at your healthiest, don't miss these 37 Places You're Most Likely to Catch Coronavirus.
