Why SoCal Edison says it must do line work all year — even in summer heat of Palm Springs - Desert Sun

Why SoCal Edison says line work must go on in Palm Springs summer heat

Why SoCal Edison says it must do line work all year — even in summer heat of Palm Springs

Criticism came after 1,300 recent planned outages in city
Paul Albani-Burgio

After Palm Springs leaders criticized Southern California Edison for turning off people's electricity to do grid upgrades during recent sweltering heat, a spokesperson for the company said the practice is necessary — and that the alternative would be even worse outages.

Jeff Monford, a senior adviser for SoCal Edison, said that the company must do such work year-round in the Coachella Valley, including during the summer, to keep the grid running reliably.

“The crews don’t adore being out in the heat,” Monford said. “And yet we know it is essential. To maintain reliability the maintenance cannot stop, even in the summer.”

He compared it to doing maintenance on your car: If you want to drive it all year, you can't delay maintenance for months.

"If you check and change the oil in a car, you are preserving the function of the engine and that is not all that expensive," he said. "If you don't do that, then you run the risk of the engine failing, which is vastly more expensive and time consuming, and you can't schedule that."

Avoiding replacement work on the power grid in the heat would only lead to more equipment failures that could last much longer than planned outages, he said.

He also said that upgrade work must be done piecemeal because it would be very costly to upgrade the entire system, which spans much of southern California, all at once. Company representatives told the city council it currently spends $5 billion a year to improve and maintain its infrastructure.

The criticism from Palm Springs council members came over recent planned maintenance expected to see about 1,300 customers having their power turned off for part of a day over a two-week period.

Most maintenance stops when mercury hits 113

There is one situation where planned maintenance work will stop: when the temperature reaches or surpasses 113 degrees. That’s because of guidelines in place to protect both power crews and customers.

Unplanned repairs, such as if a car hits a power pole or a storm damages the grid, will happen regardless of temperature.

Monford contacted The Desert Sun after an article about a public meeting where several Palm Springs City Council members questioned the company over a high number of recent power outages in the city.

“While we know you need to work year-around, any outage during the summer months is going to create serious issues for a number of individuals,” Councilmember Lisa Middleton said during the meeting. “Every effort needs to be made to do as much maintenance in the winter months as you possibly can do.”

At the meeting, representatives of Edison gave a presentation where they echoed Monford's points about the need for year-round work and said the company takes seriously the impact outages have on customers.

Later, Monford said community complaints about outages and their impacts would only increase if SoCal Edison stopped doing replacement work during the summer.

Substation upgrades hit one in neighborhood

During the council meeting, company representatives confirmed that portions of Palm Springs have been particularly hard hit by outages recently, with some people living in the vicinity of Tahquitz Canyon Way and Farrell Drive seeing as many as six planned outages in recent months.

One staffer said the outages were the result of a project to upgrade power infrastructure that was installed by a previous utility provider.

The project, which is expected to span all of 2023, will increase the amount of power the grid can provide at a time when the area is seeing greater demand for power, in large part because there are more year-round residents.

Company defends notification practices

Some council members said they don't believe SoCal Edison is doing enough to notify customers about planned maintenance outages.

A representative of the company told the council notices are typically mailed to impacted customers three to 11 days in advance, with door hangers posted if there's not enough time for mail.

The company also sends automated emails, texts or phone calls, both to warn of a planned outage and to notify if one needs to be canceled.

Monford added that customers who rely on electricity to power life-sustaining devices should contact SoCal Edison so the company knows and can personally warn them of outages.

However, Middleton and Councilmember Jeffrey Bernstein were both critical of the company’s notification system, with Middleton saying outages often don't arrive until the outage has concluded, while Bernstein said in his experiences outages either start sooner or last longer than stated in the company’s notifications.

Monford said the company had recently met with several city officials, including City Manager Scott Stiles and Councilmember Ron deHarte, about issues with a contractor doing some of the grid work around Tahquitz Way and Farrell Drive, which had been scheduling outages to last longer than needed.

SoCal Edison representatives apologized to the council during the public meeting, and Monford said it has since made it clear to that contractor that it cannot “overschedule outages.”

Monford said that aside from that situation, “the notifications are successful and correct nearly all the time.”

He said customers who have outages for replacement work should know that the short-term annoyance will bring long-term benefits.

“What’s happening is we are building a better grid now,” he said. “Everything that goes in now is better than what came out and more robust.”

Monford said that’s important because electrical demand is expected to only continue to grow as use of electric cars and other electric products increases and more people move into the valley. But while the newer equipment should both last longer and be able to handle the demands of the future, Monford said it won’t eliminate outages entirely.

“There will always be maintenance requiring an outage,” he said. “However, we will have a reliable grid that is delivering more power.”

Paul Albani-Burgio covers breaking news and the city of Palm Springs. Follow him on Twitter at @albaniburgiop and via email at paul.albani-burgio@desertsun.com.