Rolling Blackouts possible for Edison Customers

Rolling blackouts might hit customers of Southern California Edison as the utility seeks to remedy recent reliability troubles:

Rolling blackouts might hit eight areas today as Southern California Edison struggles to fix two transformers that failed Friday and Saturday, a company spokesman said.

The transformers, which convert higher voltages to levels used by homes and businesses, serve Moorpark, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village, Malibu, Calabasas and Newbury Park. Each hour, about 5,000 customers may be affected, spokesman Gil Alexander said Sunday.

Like Edison, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is having reliability troubles recently, too. Last week, 5000 customers were affected by blackouts in the Park LaBrea, Mount Olympus and Carthay Circle neighborhoods.