APPL and HWP got hit Wednesday.
Wednesday's blackouts immediately hit about half a million homes and businesses throughout the northern two-thirds of the state, from Bakersfield to Eureka, including chunks of the Silicon Valley, Sacramento and San Francisco.
Among those left suddenly powerless were some of the state's best-known corporations, including Apple Inc. and Hewlett-Packard, whose high-tech staffs were forced to fall back into the Dark Ages of window light and pen and paper.
This was revealing--
By 2 p.m. Wednesday, the state had been able to tap enough electricity from a supplier in British Columbia to halt the outages in the north. At that point, energy officials were predicting that by evening, about 2 million customers would face blackouts throughout the state, including many in Southern California Edison's territory.
At the cavernous, windowless control room of the Cal-ISO in Folsom, in the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento, a dozen men worked through the afternoon on a crescent-shaped bank of computers and phones, trying desperately to scrounge enough electricity to get the state through the day.
Outside, the sun was dropping. Blackouts at night, they knew, would be far more dangerous for drivers heading home from work.
Bob Sullivan, 44, wearing a yellow dress shirt rumpled by 11 hours of work, called suppliers, 30 an hour, inside and outside California. His canvassing finally kicked loose 1,300 megawatts from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Canadian supplier, allowing the state to get from 5 to 6 p.m. without blackouts.
After that, it was more of the same struggle through the evening.
Why did Canada's BC Hydro and the DWP come through? Perhaps because operators there realized they would not need as much electricity as they needed earlier in the day. But there could be another reason, Riley said: "This is the highest price we've paid for energy all day."
Yep, just cough-up the dough at premium prices...We'll give you power.
latimes.com |
