State Told SCE To Improve PSPS Blackouts, And PSPS Reports, But SCE Performance Still Dismal

Southern California Edison appears to be continuing to violate state regulations as it shuts off power to the Cuthbert Circuit .. the troublesome set of overhead lines in the Point Dume and Paradise Cove area.

The president of the California Public Utilities Commission told the for-profit power corporation last December that it needs to do a better job, both on its intentional “Public Safety Power Shutoffs,” and on reporting on them afterwards.

The latest PSPS event and PSPS report show no changes, however.

Last mid January … for at least the sixth time this fall and winter …. power was turned off in part of Malibu because the power company was predicting winds greater than 31 miles per hour.

Winds reached about 40 miles per hour during that Santa Ana event.

State regulators require the power company to file a report after every preemptive power blackout … what they call a P S P S … a Public Safety Power Shutoff.

Edison does not do that.

Instead … they file one report every two weeks … lumping together all of the various intentional power blackouts across its vast service area.

No details are supplied for each particular blackout.

Once again … there are no details about why the Cuthbert circuit is so vulnerable to moderate winds.

There is no count of how many customers were affected … or for how long.

The company is required to supply that information …. under regulations from the California Public Utilities Commission.

Instead … Edison lumped in three separate blackout events together … more than one million electric meters shut off across the state … with no specific information on any of them.

The word Malibu is mentioned exactly once in the 89-page report.

That’s only because the city raised a complaint about a lack of notice of the pending Cuthbert blackout.

As is the normal case … SCE’s high tech weather forecast office missed the coming winds …. and the company failed to deliver the advance warnings of possible blackouts … as it has promised to do.

And the president of the CPUC … Marybel Batjer … has told the company to do a better job.

In a letter to SCE’s president last December … the CPUC president said the Edison reports have a number of deficiencies.

Reports are filed late.

SCE lumps in numerous intentional blackouts in one report.

The power company does an incomplete job of reporting of complaints.

It fails to provide basic required reporting information.

For example … it does not provide the number of actually affected customers.

KBUU has repeatedly asked Southern California Edison … what is it about the Cuthbert Circuit that makes it more hazardous than the other circuits in Malibu … the ones that don’t keep getting blacked out??
Why is the Edison weather office repeatedly getting the forecasts wrong??

Why hasn’t the hundreds of millions of dollars in ratepayer money … devoted to system hardening … hardened this [part of the system??

Is it possible that trees along part of the lines in the Paradise Cove area … on private land … are too close to the power lines.

Edison has been in contentious talks with some landowners who do not want their trees cut.

The reply from the power company:

“These weather events are very dynamic. Sometimes, we can provide the 2-day notice and the event de-escalates.

“Other times, we do not see a wind event on the 2-day horizon and conditions worsen. “Also, there are variables other than wind speed and wind gust.”

Edison starts considering intentionally shutting off the power when the forecast winds are just 31 miles per hour … and winds exceeding that are a regular occurrence … not just in Malibu … but everywhere in the world.

The state used to hold power companies to a standard of 92 miles per hour … overhead structures had to be designed to withstand wind gusts of 92 mph for three seconds.

And the power companies were not allowed to turn off the power in fear of failure and fire.

But after the big fires of 2018 killed 70 people and damaged entire cities … the power companies were given authority by the state to shut down entire cities in advance of big wind blows.

Frankly … Malibu has had it easy … compared to some cities not too far from here.

Places like Fillmore and Simi Valley get blacked out intentionally much more often than Malibu … even more than the poor customers along the Cuthbert Circuit.

And that has the state thinking … maybe too much authority has been given to Southern California Edison and the other investor owned power companies.

Quoting now … from a recent letter from Commission President Batjer:
“We expect SCE leadership to fulfill its responsibility to reach determinations on the use of PSPS only as a last resort, and to execute PSPS safely and with minimal impact for its customers and for all Californians.”