Cal ISO shares how much energy was conserved during California’s hottest day by issuing a Flex Alert

Earlier this month, Californians saw a 10 day streak of Flex Alerts while the state's power grid saw a record breaking demand.

The California System Operator held back from issuing any rolling blackouts while the state faced an immense heat wave earlier this month.

Jeff Monford, Senior Advisor or Financial Communications for Southern California Edison says the combined effort of Californians helped prevent those blackouts.

"So many customers in the whole state and including Southern California, went around reducing the AC, not doing laundry, or running the dishwasher during the period of concern," says Monford.

Californians saw the hottest day of the year on Tuesday last week.

Cal ISO shared in a statement with News Channel 3 that the ISO grid hit a peak of 52,061 megawatts (MW), setting an all time record for energy delivered without the need of rotating outages.

They also shared in a statement that 2,025 megawatts (MW) were saved that Tuesday through response conservation and emergency assistance.

Monford tells me Southern California Edison serves about 5 million accounts which represents about 15 million people.

He also tells me that out of those 5 million, "Nearly 2 million customers are in a program called The Power Saver rewards program."

This program encourages customers by reducing energy costs when people use less power while the electricity grid is stressed.

A portion of those customers automatically participate in the issued Flex Alerts by using a smart thermostat.

"Nearly 225,000 customers are in an automatic Demand Response Program, where for example, a smart thermostat would reduce their air conditioning use during that period," says Monford.

California has not seen rotating outages since August of 2020.

Gov. Gavin Newsom says the state has provided upwards of 4,000 megawatts through new battery storage in the last two and a half months.