A Bad Omen: Rolling Blackouts Back

SAN JOSE-The managers of the state power grid are revisitng their Stage Three alerts on Monday and Tuesday, resulting in rolling blackouts for the first time since January. The blackouts, believed to be a small taste of things to come when demand for energy peaks this summer, extended from Los Angeles to Northern California.

In response to higher demand and a lack of extra supply from the Northwest, the California Independent System Operator ordered the state’s cash-strapped major utilities–Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison–to begin cut power to about one million business and residential customers on Monday, and another 500,000 on Tuesday.