Thousands without power as LADWP works on overheating equipment

As of Monday afternoon, around 6,700 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers were without power as the utility worked to restore service disrupted by a week long heatwave. The communities with the most number of impacted customers are Lincoln Heights, Arlington Heights, and Pacoima.

LADWP reported that the number of customers without power in any given neighborhood is "relatively low." However, the hottest neighborhoods, including areas with fewer trees and green space that help cool concrete, have been hit with the most outages.

Meanwhile, about 2,047 SoCalEdison customers are without power across the system due to 55outages as of Monday morning.

SCE serves about 15 million people, while LADWP has roughly 1.5 million customers.

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It's a matter of heat

On Friday, LADWP's power load was 6,300 megawatts, which almost hit an all-time record. People blasting their air conditioners isn't the only thing stressing the power grid. LADWP CEO and chief engineer Janisse Quiñones told LAist that sustained high temperatures over multiple days.

"The easiest way to explain this is, when you have your iPhone and it gets super hot, and then it sends you a message like, 'I'm overheating, I'm shutting down to cool down' — that's exactly the same thing that's happening to our equipment," Quiñones said. "It gets to a level of temperature that it's dangerous for it."

The concentration of outages in the San Fernando Valley is not a coincidence — temperatures there have been in the 100s and even 110s for much of this week, with nighttime lows in the high 80s or 90s.

"Our transformers have been loaded with high temperatures, and they have not been able to restore or rest at night," Quiñones said. "We need our equipment to cool down at night, and the temperatures have been sustained through the night."

Quiñones said the outages aren't related to a power generation problem — Quiñones said the utility has enough solar, wind and gas-fired electricity to meet demand — but rather the main issue is that many aspects of the electricity distribution system need upgrading.

The high temperatures led to failures in distribution components of the power grid like transformers, circuit breakers and cables. Even though LADWP officials say they had been working to update equipment since last year — and the upgraded equipment has held up — the severity of the current heat wave caught them off guard.

"We saw where our areas of interest were based on last year's performance, and we started replacing transformers," Quiñones said. "But this temperature has been unprecedented in the Valley."

"We're starting to see a trend of hotter summers and heat waves," Quiñones added. "I think that this heat wave has been longer sustained. I'm telling my team we gotta get ready for the new normal. These temperatures are gonna be here every summer."

What to do if you're without power

To report an outage, Quiñones requested that you call LADWP at 1-800-DIAL-DWP (that's 1-800-342-5397) or submit a report on their website, especially if you've been without power for longer than 24 hours. (SCE customers can report here.)

"I think the biggest challenge is just the sheer amount of outages. We have more outages than we have crews," Quiñones said. "The equipment is constantly failing, so we're chasing failures."

Reporting outages that last longer than 24 hours will help LADWP officials prioritize longer power shutoffs, since the estimated response time to arrive on site is between 12 and 24 hours.

"It's challenging in L.A. because a lot of our infrastructure, especially downtown L.A., it's underground and the conduits where the cables are were designed 100 years ago and they're small," Quiñones said. "So expanding the system will require huge investment in the underground infrastructure to upgrade that system."

Quiñones said now that LADWP is aware of more areas that are prone to outages, they will work on identifying more equipment that needs to be replaced for future heat waves.

If you have power, conserve it

While we can't do anything about today's extreme weather, customers who still have power can help do their part to reduce overall power usage. Unfortunately, that does mean you should only run your air conditioner when you have to.

"It helps everybody. It definitely helps us," Quiñones said "It helps the customers that are experiencing outages. It helps California, right? Like, the heat wave is not just L.A."

Relief in sight

Even with LADWP crews working around the clock to restore power, they may not go away entirely until the underlying problem (i.e. the heat wave) is gone.

Luckily, the National Weather Service predicts that Monday will be the last day of excessive heat in most areas of Southern California. Temperatures are expected to drop 10 degrees on Tuesday and even further on Wednesday and into the rest of the week.

Read more about the forecast here.