Summer Power Supply projections rely on conservation

Power supplies will be sufficient in Southern California, but only if consumers cooperate:

Southern California may have to take aggressive conservation steps to avoid electricity shortages should the coming summer be unusually hot, the operator of the state's power grid said Thursday.

The California Independent System Operator, which runs most of the transmission system, reviewed its "summer assessment," which showed that the state as a whole probably has enough electricity supplies for a typical summer.

But a summer heat wave — affecting all parts of the West from Phoenix to Los Angeles, through the Bay Area and Portland, Ore. — could leave Southern California with "critically thin operating margins" and a shortfall of as many as 1,700 megawatts, Cal-ISO said.