Power Failures for Beginners (Pasadena, Monterey Park: maintenance, taxes, live)

[robertpasa]

I'm in Monterey Park and we lost power Friday night around 930 until 130 AM. The powerco here is SoCal Edison.

When a power failure happens due to over usage (Friday was superhot) what specifically breaks at the power company? Why can't they make it so this never happens, seeing as they know there are going to be periods of heavy usage?

I lived in Pasadena for five years (Pasadena has its own power company) and never had one blackout. Don't know what that means.

What parts of Greater LA are SoCal Edison, and what areas are other companies? I went to the websites or Wiki pages for the big power companies and it didn't exactly spell it out.

[Mr_Geek]

It was equipment failure not just from "overusage". A million different things can break and cause an outage. No one here knows what happened in your area. Older areas have older equipment and are more prone to outages.

[CA4Now]

Lots of people without power all over L.A. during this heat wave.

7,000 customers still without power as hot and angry Angelenos fume at DWP

[thelopez2]

It's cheaper to fix it when it breaks than upgrade everything as preventative maintenance. The funny thing is, if there was a legislative bill to increase taxes to upgrade everything to prevent a power outage, it would probably pass, but we'd will get power outages.

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by robertpasa

Why can't they make it so this never happens, seeing as they know there are going to be periods of heavy usage?

Too many people. Too much hot weather. Poor planning by the DWP and Edison.

Environmentalists warned that problems stemming from extreme heat are not going to go away. “What we’re experiencing now — we’re going to see a lot more of it in the future,” said Jonathan Parfrey, executive director of the nonprofit Climate Resolve and a former DWP commissioner.

Parfrey argued that as climate change drives up temperatures, L.A. needs to find ways to reduce demand for electricity, including installing cooler pavement and planting trees to reduce urban temperatures. “Just telling people to stop cooling themselves down — I don’t think that’s a good strategy,” Parfrey said. “People are going to fire up the AC when it gets above 100 degrees.”
-from the link in post #3