CC SR 20201020 02 - SCE Presentation
CITY COUNCIL MEETING DATE: 10/20/2020
AGENDA REPORT AGENDA HEADING: Regular Business
AGENDA TITLE:
Consideration and possible action to receive and file a presentation from Southern
California Edison (SCE) regarding recent heat-related power outages.
RECOMMENDED COUNCIL ACTION:
(1) Receive and file a presentation by Southern California Edison (SCE) regarding
recent heat-related power outages.
FISCAL IMPACT: None
Amount Budgeted: N/A
Additional Appropriation: N/A
Account Number(s): N/A
ORIGINATED BY: Jesse Villalpando, Senior Administrative Analyst
REVIEWED BY: Karina Bañales, Deputy City Manager
APPROVED BY: Ara Mihranian, AICP, City Manager
ATTACHED SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS:
A. Southern California Edison (SCE) slide presentation (page A-1)
BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION:
At tonight’s meeting, Southern California Edison (SCE) will be presenting an update
regarding a recent series of prolonged, heat-related power outages impacting the City
and surrounding Peninsula cities. Although SCE power outages have long been a
concern for the City and residents of Rancho Palos Verdes, the recent heat-related
power outages over the Labor Day holiday weekend have prompted the City to ask SCE
to publicly explain what happened and to present on measures the utility company is
taking to reduce the frequency and duration of power outages in the City and throughout
the Peninsula.
In response to the heat-related outages, the City developed protocols to open free public
cooling centers to provide relief and protection during extreme heat conditions to
residents on the Peninsula. Hesse Park and Point Vicente Interpretive Center (PVIC)
will be opened to the public when temperatures are forecast ed to exceed 85 degrees
1
and excessive heat warnings are issued or when the City experiences a power outage
during an excessive heat warning.
On October 9, the City publicized tonight’s meeting on social media and to Breaking
News listserv subscribers, advising residents to submit their questions and concerns to
cc@rpvca.gov. To date, the City has not received any public comments for inclusion to
this staff report. If comments are received after the transmittal of this staff report, it will
be provided to the City Council as late correspondence in advance of the meeting. Staff
will be coordinating with representatives from SCE’s government relations division in
responding to residents’ questions and concerns in advance of the meeting, and they
will also be addressing residents’ concerns during tonight’s presentation.
Connie Turner, the interim Local Public Affairs Government Relations Manager for the
Peninsula cities, has confirmed her participation in tonight’s meeting to discuss
residents’ concerns experiencing power outages. Specifically, the presentation will
encompass the events of Labor Day weekend and infrastructure improvements
(Attachment A).
2
Southern California Edison
Rancho Palos Verdes City Council Update onLabor Day Weekend Outages
October 20, 2020
A-1
1
California Heat Wave1 in 20 Years
•Extreme heat conditions across
the state, causing outages in
many of the communities we
serve.
•Labor Day weekend high
temperatures on Palos Verdes
Peninsula in excess of 100
degrees.
A-2
HOW WE GOT HERE
•Record temperatures and record peak power demand on Saturday, September 5th.
We broke both those records yet again on Sunday. Equally tough on our system
were record-breaking overnight temperatures—i.e. we had record-high lows.
•Heat-related outages typically involve burned-out equipment. Each heat-related
outage affects fewer customers, so the net result is that we require more crews,
doing more repairs to restore power for a “heat storm” than for the equivalent
number of customers out for “wires -down” events.
•Our equipment is designed for our climate: transformers cycle through daytime
highs, and then are designed to cool down during cooler overnight hours. During
this heatwave, our equipment ran 24/7 as residents from the east, all the way to
our metro areas and even the coast, were subject to the unrelenting heat.
•We had nearly 390,000 customer outages from midnight Friday night to noon
Tuesday (this reflects some customers impacted with multiple outages).
2A-3
WHAT WE DID TO RESTORE POWER (SCE TERRITORY WIDE)
•Between Saturday morning and Monday night, we replaced 351 transformers,
11 poles and many spans of conductor.
•We had crews in the field on a 24-hour basis since Friday night to restore
power. This includes troubleshooters (who locate and diagnose issues), repair
crews, technicians and support staff.
•We imported crews from regions that were less hard hit in order to direct our
attention to the areas of greatest outage.
•We had crews standing by to support the electrical services needs of
firefighters who were working three major fires in our region.
3A-4
RANCHO PALOS VERDES WILDFIRE MITIGATION WORK
•Helicopter and drone inspections of SCE infrastructure across peninsula.
Approximately:
•1.78 miles of covered conductor installed with 0.66 miles left to install
in 2020.
•172 poles replaced.
•115 cross arms replaced.
•285 locations of vegetation management.
4A-5
LESSONS LEARNED & NEXT STEPS
•SCE South Bay District
•SCE Engineering
5A-6
E XAMPLE OF PHASE BALANCING
6A-7
QUESTIONS?
Sign up to receive SCE Outage Alerts via voice, email or text
message by going to www.sce.com or 1-800-655-4555.
7A-8