PG&E States It Takes Factors Into Account To Minimize Impact With Rotating Outages

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) - There are no blackouts slated for Sunday night in California.

But Cal ISO's flex alert is going to be lingering around until Wednesday.

Cal ISO's standing position with these rotating outages is that they ask utility companies to reduce the load to keep the power grid reliable and stable.

But that the utility makes the final call on what sections of the grid to turn off.

PG&E said on Sunday that it can't predict who may be affected until Cal ISO states exactly how many megawatts it needs to take offline.

As we reported, the utility says it takes that directive from Cal ISO then that determines where the outages happen and how many customers will be impacted.

On Friday, 220,000 customers lost power and it was restored that night.

It was the same story on Saturday.

The same number of customers went dark later having power back in the evening hours as well.

But PG&E said it does try to take certain factors into account to minimize the impact.

"It's a challenging thing because what we do want to take into account as much as possible what areas may be cooler for example," Jeff Smith, a PG&E spokesperson, said.

"We don't want to take out any more customers than necessary. So we're looking to identify blocks that will add up to the exact number of customers that are needed. And do the best to make sure that the customers that were taken out Friday don't get taken out Saturday."

Several counties faced a potential rolling outage after straining the power grid – but none of them were in our area.

The utility is telling us that it will continue to work with Cal ISO throughout the week as the heatwave continues.