California survived the hottest August on record without needing Flex Alerts. Here’s why

Californians just made it through the hottest August on record without having to endure any rolling power outages.

And, as the Southland continues to sweat its way through record-setting heat and humidity this week, there have been no widespread calls to reduce energy.

In fact, the state has not issued a Flex Alert since 2022, and it has not implemented rotating outages since 2020.

Over the last few years, California has quietly but dramatically increased the resiliency of its electrical grid through a significant expansion in battery energy storage.

These batteries hold onto solar energy captured during the day, so it can be sent to the grid as demand peaks in the evening and morning, when most people are at home running air conditioners and other appliances.

During the August heat wave of 2020, the California Independent System Operator, which manages the flow of electricity for most of the state, declared a Stage 3 Emergency and hundreds of thousands of households lost power in rolling outages.

At the time, the system had less than 100 megawatts of battery storage available, according to system spokesperson Jayme Ackemann.

Today, it has more than 17,000 megawatts available.

“In about five years, we have vastly increased the amount of battery storage that is available to us,” said Ackemann, “and that is great news.”

According to Ackemann, the system seeks to add another 20,000 to 25,000 megawatts of battery storage capacity by 2045 — the same year it has set a goal of achieving carbon neutrality. That means the state would remove as many carbon emissions from the atmosphere as it emits.

Hitting that goal will require increasing the supply of renewable energy and transitioning away from the use of natural gas, which supplies roughly a third of the state’s electricity.

In recent years, California has steadily grown the share of electrical power generated by renewable sources — such as solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower — which bolstered the resiliency of the grid by increasing the overall amount of energy available. An uptick in people installing rooftop solar panels has provided an additional power boost, Ackemann said.

In May, California became the first known large-scale power system in the world to have relied on more than 50% solar power for an entire month.

“California has had a wealth of solar growth in the last five years,” said Abby Lestina, an analyst at Grid Status, a group that tracks electricity supply and demand in U.S. power markets. “It makes sense that they would reach this goal.”

California’s grid is also now integrated with electrical systems across much of the Western United States. This means that if there is an extreme heat event in Southern California, energy from a cooler area such as the Pacific Northwest can be imported to help meet regional demand.

All of this has collectively helped the state’s electrical system weather this year’s long-lasting heat.

“We passed our highest peak of the year Wednesday with more than 50,000 megawatts of demand on the grid,” said Ackemann. “While we were very carefully monitoring the grid, we were confident that we were going to make it through the day.”

That high is close to the all-time peak demand record of 52,061 megawatts set on Sept. 6, 2022.

Continuing to strengthen the resiliency of the state’s electrical grid is important as extreme-heat events become more common due to climate change.

While California recorded the warmest average daytime maximum temperature on record in August, the planet as a whole tied with July 2023 for the Earth’s hottest month on record. In Europe, more than 35,000 people have died from heat during a string of record-setting heat waves, often due to a lack of air conditioning.

After enduring a record-shattering heat wave this spring, Southern California continued to break temperature records this week when Long Beach reached a blistering 107 degrees and Escondido hit 112 degrees.

The state must also continue to amp up its energy supply in order to ensure it can meet the growing electrical demand posed by AI data centers.

Though the days of urgent pleas to reduce power use in the hopes of preventing major outages appear to be largely over in California, local utilities still employ public safety power shutoffs. These are proactive, temporary electricity shut-offs to prevent high-voltage power lines and equipment from sparking wildfires during red flag weather conditions.

In addition, there are unforeseen circumstances that could prompt the use of Flex Alerts and rolling outages in limited areas.

A wildfire that destroys energy generation facilities during a significant heat wave, for example, could cause enough capacity loss to generate the use of these tools, said Ackemann.

Extreme heat can cause electrical equipment to fail, leading to temporary, unplanned outages, as took place in San Diego this week.

“But because we have a much stronger grid today and because we have a much more geographically diverse grid,” said Ackemann, “we have a much stronger ability to navigate those kinds of unexpected incidents.”

Times staff writers Blanca Begert and Hayley Smith contributed to this report.