About 1,000 Big Customers Help Edison Beat the Heat

High demand for electricity caused by Monday’s heat prompted Southern California Edison to ask about 1,000 companies, many of them in Orange County, to turn off their power.

“We had to do this once last summer,” Edison spokesman Steve Hansen said. “This is the sixth time this summer. It’s getting kind of precarious.”

The companies involved--mostly college campuses, manufacturing concerns and large businesses that can generate their own power or reschedule operations to a cooler part of the day--are on a list of Edison customers that have volunteered for periodic power interruptions in exchange for reductions of 15% to 20% in their electricity rates.

“These customers have agreed, in return for the reduced rates, to interrupt their load if we ask them to,” Hansen said.

Edison does so whenever the region reaches a Stage II alert--when the gap between the demand for power and its supply reaches 5% or less. On Monday, that happened about 2 p.m., with Edison’s request for voluntary interruptions following an hour later.

“This is the most we’ve ever asked for,” Hansen said, explaining that, while the company has frequently asked some companies on the list to turn off their power, it has never made that request of the entire list. “We can get up to 2,500 megawatts this way, and today we got 2,400 megawatts”--enough to power about 2 million homes.

The company attributes this summer’s higher demand for energy to generally warmer temperatures, which prompt people to run air conditioners longer. On Monday, temperatures in parts of Orange County reached the mid-90s.

Demand in general is creeping up, while the supply is staying the same, Hansen said. “We aren’t building any more power plants,” he said. “Demand is higher than we expected it to be because the economy is better than we thought.”