The Brief

It’s finally feeling like Fall in Southern California, but we just sweated through the hottest summer on record. The recent hotter, longer heat waves caused power outages across the region.

But some people avoided them — and even helped prevent more widespread outages across the power grid.

In a place of relatively frequent power outages: A power island

Joe and Teresa Tortomasi were one of those households whose power never went off during an extended extreme heat wave in early September. They live in Sierra Madre, a small city nestled against the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains.

“We're in what they call the Upper Canyon,” Joe told me when I visited them at their quaint, light blue painted home with white shutters. “This is very un-L.A. No offense to L.A., it's just very rural.”

“He's saying that because we live right next to the mountains, so as we sit here outside, we feel like we're in the mountains,” added his wife Teresa. “And every time people visit us from anywhere in the L.A. area, they say ‘is this L.A.?’”

Joe and Teresa Tortomasi outside their home in Sierra Madre. Solar panels that connect to a battery are on their roof.

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Erin Stone

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The house is in a neighborhood full of whimsical cabins along winding canyon roads. Bobcats, coyotes, bears and other critters are frequent visitors.

The retired teachers have lived here for nearly 40 years. This area has long had relatively frequent power outages because of where it’s located on the broader grid — when circuit breakers or distribution lines are overloaded, there aren’t options for Southern California Edison (SCE) to reroute power here through other lines. Basically, the canyon is at the end of the line.

While doing their part to cut pollution was a big factor in the Tortomasis' decision to install solar panels and battery storage, the power outages plus rising energy costs were also major reasons.

“We tend to have blackouts up in the canyon and we were just getting tired of it,” said Joe.

In their years living here, despite the work SCE has done to fortify the lines serving the canyon, the Tortomasis said power outages have gotten more frequent.

“Mostly because of the warming temperatures,” Teresa said. “30 years ago, it wasn't like this. We can really see the difference and the climate change. When we had that excruciating weather a couple of weeks ago, we were the only ones in our little corner of the canyon [who] still had power.”

That’s because they now have solar panels and a battery. In early September, temperatures here reached as high as 110 degrees and much of the canyon lost power for hours.

“All our neighbors always check with each other, so we were getting texts saying, 'do you have power? Do you have power?’ And we just told everybody, ‘If you need anything, just come over here, because we have power,’” Teresa said.

Teresa and Joe Tortomasi stand beside their 13 kilowatt hour battery, which stores energy from their solar panels to support their whole home, and can also offload excess power to the broader power grid.

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Erin Stone

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More energy use, lower bills

This summer was also the first time the Tortomasis can remember having to keep their air conditioning going at night.

“We had no cool air at night — our night time was still 85 degrees outside, and it was the first time in our almost 40 years here that we actually did not open our windows at night,” said Teresa.

Rising nighttime temperatures are one of the clearest fingerprints of how fossil fuel pollution is changing our climate. To be able to sleep, they turned on the A/C, using power from their battery, which stored energy that their solar panels had absorbed during the day.

The Tortomasis have a smartphone app to monitor their solar panels and battery storage.

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Even though the Tortomasis had to use more electricity, that increased use didn't further strain the power grid we all rely on because they were using power from their battery.

And instead of their costs going up because they have to use more energy due to hotter days and nights, the Tortomasis' electricity bill is in the negatives.

They had to dig into their savings to pay for the solar and battery — as well as install a new roof for the panels and upgrade their electric panel — but they’re now saving money because of the excess power they sell back to the grid.

“We're really making our money back," Joe said. "I mean, we don't have to pay any electric bills."

Plus, living in a high-risk fire area, they don't have to worry about SCE shutting off their power to prevent fires during high-risk weather.

“We feel safer,” said Joe.

“I don't have that stress of always being worried that the power might go out,” said Teresa.

Policy changes have slowed solar-plus-battery market

The Tortomasis have essentially negative electric bills because they got their solar panels before cuts to state rooftop solar incentives went into effect last year.

Under the new rules, the state cut how much solar users get paid back for the excess energy they generate. Instead, people who install solar and battery storage will get a better deal when they sell excess energy from their batteries during high-demand times of the evening.

The white Tesla box is the battery gateway, which orchestrates the home's energy sources and loads, including automatically switching to offload power to the grid during critical times.

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In the decision, which only applies to investor-owned utilities, the California Public Utilities Commission argued the previous incentives for rooftop solar were leading to higher costs for people without solar — a claim that solar advocates and some economic models refute — and that it was time to instead incentivize solar-plus-battery storage.

That’s because we now have more solar power during the day than we can use, so we need to be able to store more of that power for when the sun goes down.

But batteries are still really expensive. Vic Aguilar, who installed the Tortomasis' system, said the cost for a solar-plus-battery system ranges from about $15,000 to more than $120,000.

Vic Aguilar has been in the solar business for 18 years.

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“The upfront capital expenditure with the new rules is significantly greater because it involves the batteries,” Aguilar said. “The batteries generally double the cost of an average project.”

And, under the new rules, the timeline for breaking even on that investment is now eight to 12 years, instead of six to eight years.

Solar panels on a home in Ladera Heights, a community southeast of Los Angeles.

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Lauren Justice

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CalMatters

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Aguilar — better known as Solar Vic by Sierra Madre locals — has been in the business for 18 years and owns the company Sustainergy Advisors. While his clients in new housing developments and large households have grown, Aguilar said he’s seen a big decline in his middle and lower-income customers since the new state rules went into effect last April.

“There’s still a compelling economic argument that can be made, especially with the larger households — they use so much energy that even under [the new rules] they’re saving ginormous amounts of money,” Aguilar said.

Industry decline outpaces growth of battery installs

Since the new rules went into effect last year, the solar market has dropped 60% and about 17,000 solar jobs have been cut, said Bernadette Del Chiaro, director of solar industry trade group California Solar and Storage Association.

Ken Wells founded O&M Solar Services, a small residential solar company in South Los Angeles.

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Lauren Justice

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“More people that are going solar today are adding a battery, which is good, but the overall decline in the market does not make up for the growth in storage,” said Del Chiaro. “So we've actually set ourselves back with energy storage, contrary to what the policymakers say their intentions were.”

Del Chiaro said fewer people are now installing solar, let alone batteries too. That's hurt local businesses.

Ken Wells founded South L.A.-based O&M Solar Services in 2018, and had both solar and solar-plus-storage clients. But after the new rules went into effect he had to close his business and lay off his 30 employees.

“There was just this huge drop and I went from doing 20 to 30 projects a month to just seven or one a week,” Wells said. “I was already facing barriers financing my company and getting the capital to scale, so most of what I was doing was bootstrapping. I was taking my money and putting it right back into my business.”

“So when this happened,” Wells added. “I was unable to sustain any longer and I unfortunately had to close my doors, let all my guys go.”

Wells said he’s working to build back his company, but has since shifted into consulting.

Ken Wells walks outside a home with solar panels in Ladera Heights.

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Lauren Justice

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CalMatters

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Why more "distributed energy" matters for the whole power grid

Many solar advocates say the change in policy hurts the grid overall.

Rooftop solar-plus-battery storage systems — called "distributed energy" — have already helped the grid avoid widespread blackouts despite recent summers being the hottest in more than 150 years.

The Tortomasis, for example, are part of what’s called a virtual power plant. It’s made up of their home, along with nearly 3,000 other homes that also have solar and batteries.

The app connected to the Tortomasis solar and storage system also shows the virtual power plant they're part of with other Southern California Edison customers.

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“You're aggregating them into a fleet so they can all work in concert, like a flock of birds, on demand,” Aguilar explained.

Southern California Edison can pull energy from this residential battery fleet to support the grid when it’s most strained, particularly during hot summer evenings.

That not only helps the utility avoid widespread power outages, but it also reduces the need to power up highly polluting backup generators when extreme, prolonged heat risks brownouts or blackouts.

Joe Tortomasi looks at the 13 kilowatt hour battery that is installed on his home in Sierra Madre.

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In 2022, that’s exactly what happened: The state’s grid operator sent out flex alerts — those urgent texts to conserve energy — after a gas-fired peaker power plant generator unexpectedly went offline. To avoid massive blackouts, the state pulled energy from batteries attached to homes, schools and businesses across the state.

“If you take these millions of small systems — they're all highly coordinated, highly technical systems that we're putting up in our garages — they can act like a coordinated power plant and turn on a dime to provide value to the state,” Del Chiaro said.

How much distributed energy storage does the state have?

Currently, the state has more than 2,000 megawatts of distributed battery storage on homes, schools, businesses and government buildings, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. That's about as much energy generated by two typical nuclear reactors.

More than half of that battery storage is from homes with solar and batteries, and most of it is coming from L.A. County.

Batteries played a huge role in the grid’s resilience this past summer: Despite it being the hottest summer on record, we didn't experience flex alerts or major rolling blackouts.

“This last summer they were a big part of our resiliency,” said Aguilar. “They really were what saved the grid. And not just on the big utility scale where there are container fields of these giant batteries. A lot of it is happening on a distributed basis.”

A map of where distributed battery storage is across the state. The majority is in Southern California.

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California Public Utilities Commission

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And it’s all automated. The Tortomasis don’t have to do anything — they just know where their power’s going via a smartphone app.

“People say, ‘oh the technology is not ready yet,’ Aguilar said. “And they have no idea the robustness, the incredibleness of what we have right now. The renewable revolution is just in time. We are at the stage to implement, implement, implement.”

A graph showing how California's distributed battery storage has increased over time. Most of the growth is in the residential sector.

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California Public Utilities Commission

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Most of the distributed battery storage in California is on people's homes.

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California Public Utilities Commission

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Tips if you're considering solar-plus-battery storage

Solar panels are made to last at least 25 years, so you want to make sure you’re making a good investment.

Here are some tips from installer Vic Aguilar of Sustainergy Advisors:

• Talk to friends and neighbors who have solar about what they wish they’d known and their experience
• Talk to at least two or three installers before choosing one
• Have your roof checked out before going all in because you may need to re-roof
• Consider your total electric use and future use — you will likely need to upgrade your electric panel (a contractor can help with this)
• Find a contractor who knows the rules for the specific electric utility you pay your bills to, as well as the financial incentives available for the install
  
  • On that note, also do your own research on the rules for solar and storage from your electricity provider. For example, Pasadena Water and Power has different rules from Southern California Edison.
  • Check out our guide on financial incentives for going electric
• Consider if you want your whole home to be backed up, or just critical functions
• Consider your main reasons for going solar because no single system can do it all: do you want to save on bills? Do you want to maximize resiliency? Do you want to eliminate your carbon pollution? 
• Consider a contractor who values ethical and sustainable sourcing of panels and batteries 

Additional resources:

• Find a certified contractor here 
• Find financial incentives here
• Find trusted financing options here 

The California State University faculty union is asking its members to authorize a strike, as negotiations with the California State University system remain stalled.

This summer, the California Faculty Association declared an impasse after 16 months of negotiation with the CSU. The union’s president said university officials negotiating with the union have “not been honest agents.”

If a majority of members approve the strike authorization, voting from Oct. 26 through Nov. 19, CFA leadership would be authorized to call a strike.

The union, which represents 29,000 professors and other university employees, is seeking salary increases, changes to faculty workloads and protections related to the use of artificial intelligence.

In recent weeks, CSU has reached tentative agreements with three unions: the Statewide University Police Association, the United Auto Workers Local 4123 and Academic Professionals of California. Together, the agreements cover 14,000 university employees.

The tentative agreements, which must be approved by union members and CSU’s Board of Trustees, include an 8% salary increase over two years, along with one-time raises negotiated by each bargaining unit.

It can be tough to be tall. I am 6 feet, hear me out.

And yes, complaining about being able to see over a crowd may sound silly. But height can be a love-hate relationship for many people, particularly towering women and children who feel like they just don’t fit in.

Well, that’s where a worldwide social club for tall people comes in, but whether it’ll reach its 100th birthday is in question.

Tall Clubs International is an organization spanning more than a dozen states and several countries that offers tall adults a chance to connect and commiserate. The original chapter, founded in Los Angeles in 1938, is called the California Tip Toppers.

To get into the L.A. group, men have to be 6 feet 4 inches or taller, and women have to be at least 6 feet. One of the tallest members of the organization is 7 feet 2 inches, and honestly, I couldn’t help but perk up at the opportunity to feel short for once in my life.

At 13, I was still growing at 5 feet 10, towering over almost every kid in my freshman high school class. One of the first questions people still ask me is whether I played volleyball or basketball, and I’ve learned to laugh at the look they get when I say I preferred theater.

“People see how tall you are, they expect ‘Oh, you're going to be great on the basketball court,’” said Michele Cripps, a 6-foot-1 member of the California Tip Toppers, who joined in 1996. She's married to William Walter Wiseman II, a fellow member. “Well, I'm sorry, white girls can't jump sometimes, and I'm one of them.”

Some of the tall club members are generational, encouraged to join by their parents or older relatives, which has started to pose its own problems as the chapters get older.

What’s the big deal anyways?

William Walter Wiseman II and Michele Cripps at the 2026 Tall Clubs International convention in Hollywood.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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The chapters became a way for tall people to trade practical tips, like which stores sold pants that actually covered your ankles or shoes that didn’t need to be specially made.

“I was always being kidded about my pants being too short or my clothes not fitting correctly,” said Wiseman, who's nearly 6 feet 9 and also wasn’t much of a basketball player. “And as I grew as an adult, people are a little bit afraid to approach people that are tall.”

Wiseman has a good sense of humor about his height, cracking jokes that I’ve added to my arsenal when answering “how’s the weather up there?” But he doesn’t gloss over the pain points either — Wiseman can’t fit into cars or roller coasters, hotel beds are never long enough, and airplanes can be an expensive nightmare.

“It's not just the socialization of being tall, but it's also the physicality of it,” he said. “It's almost a handicap to be tall.”

Members of the Tall Club of Orange County at the 2026 convention.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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Cripps said she was a skinny kid, but she couldn’t help but feel “huge” growing up a head above everyone else, which hurt her young self-esteem and made dating more difficult.

The clubs gave them both a chance to see eye to eye with a room full of people for the first time, and potentially even find a partner. Wiseman’s parents met in the Dayton Altitudians tall club in Ohio, decades before Wiseman and Cripps met through their own California clubs.

“The people that married inside the club stayed married,” said Wiseman, who lives in Torrance with Cripps. “The people that married outside of the club got divorced.”

A Dayton Daily News clipping of William Walter Wiseman II's father measuring tall teens in the Dayton, Ohio area from November 19, 1958. 

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Courtesy William Walter Wiseman II

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Future of the club in question

But now, the California Tip Toppers is having trouble bringing in new, younger members — a recruitment crisis that’s essentially dissolved groups in other areas, Wiseman said.

Members of the California Tip Toppers at the 2026 convention.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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“We're facing the same challenges like all other clubs,” Cripps and Wiseman said, jumping in to finish each other’s thoughts. “Some of it could be generational. Some of it's that since COVID, the clubs have not been quite as active as they used to be. Some people [don’t have] homes to open up anymore … and we're all getting older.”

The club is at a crossroads: Get new members on board or fade away. The couple seems to have made it a mission to rejuvenate the California Tip Toppers, but Cripps was frank when she said they’re not sure how to get more people involved, whether it's fresh events or outreach opportunities.

At the end of the day, they’re hoping the club and the community it fosters can help others learn how to “stand tall” and be proud.

The clubs crown a new Miss Tall International at a formal pageant held during the annual convention. The former Miss Tall Clubs International that were at the 2026 convention from left to right: Susan Hopkins, 2019, from the Tall Club of Orange County, Martine Whitford, 1959, from the Los Angeles Higher Ups, Norma Forrest, 1996, from the Tall Club of Toronto and Mary Eleman, 2022, from the Central Arizona Tall Society.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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Members of the Tall Clubs International convention committee.  From left to right: Barry Umbs from Milwaukee, William Walter Wiseman II from the California Tip Toppers, Jim Nelson from the Paramount Tall Club-Chicago and Michele Cripps from the California Tip Toppers.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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“It’s a challenge, but it’s something that was given to us,” Cripps said. “I say as I've aged, I should have listened to my mother, I should have stood up tall.”

Moms everywhere, mine included, rejoice.

“Everybody wants to be something different than they have,” Cripps continued. “So, try and embrace what you have. Life is too short, and it goes too quick.”

Beyond the Rose Bowl and historic bungalows, Pasadena has stranger tales to tell. David Kalbeitzer has been seeking out those stories where rocket science meets the occult and ghosts haunt the city’s grandest buildings.

For Kalbeitzer, a Disney executive who investigates the paranormal in his free time, his fascination with the city’s mysterious side started when he bought a Victorian north of Old Town.

He sensed a spirit at the open house a dozen years ago and took it as a reason to move his family to Pasadena. Then he started learning the city’s history.

David Kalbeitzer, a paranormal investigator from Pasadena, is giving a talk about the city's strange history Saturday night in Old Town.

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Courtesy of David Kalbeitzer

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“I realized, ‘Oh, this place called us just as much as we were looking for it,’” he said.

On Saturday night, he’s sharing the lore he’s collected at Mesmer Mesmer an Old Town shop and event space. While the event is full, there’s a waitlist, and more talks featuring Kalbeitzer are in the works.

A city of ghost stories 

Ask Kalbeitzer about haunted Pasadena, and the list stretches from alleyways to the Colorado Street Bridge to Castle Green, the turreted former hotel overlooking Central Park.

“The Pasadena Playhouse theater is, you know, very haunted,” he added.

He says theatergoers have reported hearing disembodied voices.

Theatergoers over the years have described hearing voices and seeing apparitions at the Pasadena Playhouse.

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Jeff Lorch

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Courtesy of Pasadena Playhouse

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“And you look, and there’s no one there, or apparitions that have been seen sort of standing in the corner, and then you walk up, and they kind of disappear like shadowy figures,” he said.

As for the spirit that helped draw him to his current Pasadena home?

Kalbeitzer says she’s still around — and his psychic friend Michael Kouri shared her name: Dolores.

“It’s actually haunted by a very kind ghost that looks out for the house, protects my family and has been able to activate our alarm,” he said.

Having a Dolores in the house might send some people running, but Kalbeitzer said he grew up in a haunted house in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

And when his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a teenage Kalbeitzer started seeking out places known for paranormal activity.

Rocket science, ritual magic and mind-reading

Having lived in different neighborhoods in L.A., Kalbeitzer says there’s something uniquely otherworldly about Pasadena — and it goes beyond ghost stories.

He said the city has an energy that draws people exploring the unknown, perhaps most famously Jack Parsons.

The rocket pioneer who helped launch the Jet Propulsion Laboratory also practiced ritual magic at his Pasadena home with the likes of L. Ron Hubbard before he founded Scientology.

“Many people call it the occult," Kalbeitzer said. "I don’t know that I fully subscribe to that, but there is spiritualism and occult mixed in there."

Then there was Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of The Jungle, whose interests while living in Pasadena extended to telepathy and séances.

Upton Sinclair, pictured with his wife Mary Craig Sinclair in 1935, several years after he published a book examining her reported telepathy.

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Los Angeles Times via Wikimedia Commons

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In 1930, Sinclair published Mental Radio, a book about experiments in mind-reading. Albert Einstein provided a preface. Yes, that Einstein, who would spend the following winter at Caltech expanding on the theories of relativity and cosmology.

“It’s the craziest mixture of things that were happening at that time and all of it at the same time,” Kalbeitzer said.

A presence in the shop 

The event couldn’t have found a more appropriate venue.

Since opening five months ago in Old Town, Mesmer Mesmer has embraced the dark and mysterious, offering tarot and crystal readings and hosting events on subjects such as hip-hop’s relationship with ghosts.

Tyke O'Brien opened her shop Mesmer Mesmer earlier this year to create a third space and offer books and esoterica alongside clothing.

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Tyke O'Brien

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At that event, a medium told owner Tyke O’Brien she could sense a presence in the shop, which formerly housed a bridal store.

“She goes, ‘Do you ever feel it?’ And I’m like, ‘I am such a bummer,” O’Brien recounted. “I wish I could say yes."

The same can be said for this writer who’s lived and worked in and around Pasadena for years without so much as a brush with the otherworldly.

Kalbeitzer, on the other hand, reports supernatural encounters all around town.

“Everyone has the ability to have those experiences," he said. "But I do think how you see yourself in the world has a lot more to do with it, and whether you want to have those experiences."

Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027. 

At a community meeting Thursday night at MacArthur Park Elementary School, officials said fence installation is now expected to continue through fall 2027, overshooting the previously announced spring 2027 completion date.

Thursday’s meeting highlighted the divide over the city’s plan to fence off MacArthur Park, with tensions rising during public comment. The Los Angeles Police Department says the fence will make drug enforcement easier, while some in the community who volunteer around the park questioned whether it will improve safety enough to justify the cost.

The city has allocated $2.3 million for the project, but officials have not said whether that will cover the full cost.

Installation of the green metal fence around the park’s perimeter is expected to begin in November and take about a year. A second phase, adding decorative elements to the fence, is planned for fall and winter 2027. Officials said the schedule could change because of weather or other unforeseen circumstances.

The park is expected to remain open during construction.

Capt. Ben Fernandes with the LAPD’s Rampart Division said the fence would create a barrier along Alvarado Street and other areas where officers have seen people using narcotics. That would allow police to focus more of their enforcement efforts inside the park, he said.

“So if people are going deeper into the park to use, that’ll make it easier for us to go in and do enforcement on them and arrest them for that use,” Fernandes said. 

MacArthur Park will close every night once an 8-foot-tall fence goes up around the green space, with Los Angeles police officers sweeping the park for encampments and people sleeping there before the gates shut. The Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners approved the plan Thursday.

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LA Recreation and Parks

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“I’ve been an officer for 29 years, and I’ve always known I can go buy drugs there, and I did as a narcotics officer. So what I’m saying is, we are trying to make it not convenient,” he added. 

Fernandes also said the city plans to enhance the park’s existing camera network. LAPD officers and Los Angeles Park Rangers will be able to monitor the cameras from their respective stations, he said. City officials are still evaluating whether additional cameras will be needed to address blind spots in the park after construction is complete.

Ariana Walker, who visits MacArthur Park every Saturday with a group of friends who pool their own resources to distribute food and hygiene kits, questioned whether the city had shown that the fence would improve safety and how much it would cost to maintain.

“The fence is a $2.3 million fence at the base level,” she said. “And they haven’t given us any indication of how much more it’s going to cost for upkeep, to keep anybody safe. There’s no conclusive evidence that a fence is going to stop crime the way that they’re suggesting.”

The meeting grew tense when John Alle, a local property owner whose family owns the building that houses Langer’s Delicatessen across the street from the park, objected to having his comments read from a written comment card rather than speaking directly to officials. Alle has been a vocal critic of the city’s response to drug activity and public safety concerns around MacArthur Park.

He was allowed to comment during the meeting and said the city needs to take a tougher approach to drug use and sales around the park. 

“We see knife attacks at all hours of the day. It’s out of control. And it’s not gotten any better,” he said. “We want to bring it back to where it was 15 or 20 years ago.”

Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027.

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Gary Coronado

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The LA Local

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Alle pointed to public events at the park, including an upcoming Día de los Muertos celebration and a Labor Day weekend picnic hosted by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman as positive developments for the space. But he added those events do not reflect conditions throughout the park.

Officials also outlined other planned improvements, including restoring access through the tunnels connecting the park’s north and south sides, making accessibility upgrades and providing free Wi-Fi for parkgoers. 

Residents who want to provide input on the fence’s decorative elements can email admin@themorcosgroup.com or call (310) 479-4727 for more information.

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