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Long Beach power outages: Public Utilities Commission orders Edison to investigate grid
Paul Grigaux a vice president of So. California Edison, describes the July 15 outage that left thousands of Long Beach residents without power. With him at the Long Beach town hall meeting Aug. 22, 2105 is another Edison vice president, Greg Ferree.
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Sharon McNary/KPCC
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Safety officials with the state Public Utilities Commission have ordered Southern California Edison to put its Long Beach power grid under the microscope.
The PUC, which regulates investor-owned utilities like Edison, ordered the additional inspections late Tuesday after yet another outage cut power to hundreds of homes and businesses Sunday afternoon.
Two major outages in July followed explosions in electrical vaults in downtown Long Beach. Those outages kept the power off for several days, affecting thousands of customers.
But lesser outages continued in August in other parts of the city. Edison officials have been blaming the heat, saying customers running their air conditioning 24 hours a day during hot spells is overloading their equipment.
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