'I Hope It's Different': Residents Hope High Heat Doesn't Bring More Rolling Blackouts

WEST SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Power was in short supply in early August forcing rolling blackouts in places like El Dorado County and Stockton, and with another few days of high heat forecasted through the weekend, residents are hoping there won't be power problems this time around.

"You want that AC, you want that central air rocking and rolling," said Marcus Ware, of West Sacramento, who was one of hundreds of thousands of PG&E customers who had their power cut during the rolling blackouts.

The early August outages came in the middle of a perfect storm that forced the first stage three emergency for a strained power grid in nearly 20 years.

Record-breaking heat caused a surge in demand for power all across the state. California was unable to import energy from states like Arizona and Nevada, both of which typically can supply extra power to the Golden State, if needed, but they were struggling with a heat wave of their own.

"I hope it's different and we can get the power source's that we need from wherever we need it from," Ware said.

CBS13 asked the California Independent System Operator – the managers of the state power grid – if they're concerned by this coming weekend's high heat, and they said they're not anticipating outages because this heat wave is expected to be milder than the one in early August.

But things could change quickly if a power plant trips offline or if transmission lines are impacted by fire.

"Hopefully we can avoid it," Ware said. "If not we have to suck it up and do what we gotta do."

Solar energy does also make up a portion of California's power supply and that could be impacted if these smoky skies from nearby wildfires continue through the weekend.