Maintenance power outages planned for parts of the valley as temperatures climb

Hundreds of people will be dealing with planned outages in the next couple of weeks as temperatures reach dangerous highs.

Southern California Edison has several maintenance outages scheduled over the next couple of weeks. The planned outages will impact some of the residents in Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Cathedral City, and Rancho Mirage. According to SCE, more than 550 customers within those cities will be impacted by the planned outages.

Here are the dates for the outages listed on SCE's website:

• Palm Springs:
  • July, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14
  • About 197 customers possibly impacted
• Rancho Mirage:
  • July 2, 7, 14, and 14
  • About 304 customers impacted
• Cathedral City
  • July 10 and 11
  • About 60 customers impacted

SCE customers can go on the company's website and search for their address to see if and when a planned outage would happen. The website does not note how many customers would be affected by each outage separately.

SCE senior advisor Jeff Monford said crews will update old equipment and make sure everything is working the way it should. 

"They will be doing planned maintenance work based on assessing the components of the electrical grid," said Monford. "On the hottest of days, we try to do outages at night when the temperature is at its lowest... "The grid is so big, and there's just so much to it, that we have to maintain it year round."

SCE representatives attended the Palm Springs City Council meeting Thursday evening. That's where council member Lisa Middleton shared her concerns.

"While we know you need to work year-round, any outage during the summer months in Palm Springs is going to create serious issues for any number of individuals," said Middleton.

The representatives of the utility company did acknowledge at the meeting that they have fallen short of communicating outages with community members.

"If we paused maintenance during the summer months, that would lead to less reliability, longer outages when nobody wants them," said Monford. "Things get worse if we don't maintain the grid, it can break down. And then those outages are definitely going to be longer than anything we have planned."

Imperial Irrigation District only has one planned outage so far this summer. IID spokesperson Robert Schettler said it'll be in the Imperial Valley on July 1 from 12:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. affecting 200 customers.

"We tried to do all that during the winter," said Schettler. "We know this is an inconvenience so our job is to keep the power on and that's what we want to do."