Weather Insider: Heat Season Power Outages
"Heat season" is May through September, or when heat risk is high and cooling demand is elevated.
Heat season outages accounted for nearly half of all weather-related outages during the analyzed period. It's important to point out that this study focuses on major outages that affect at least 50,000 customers or interrupt service of 300+ megawatts. With that consideration, there was a 60% increase in heat season power outages during the last 10 years, compared to the first decade analyzed.
Broken down regionally, the South leads the way followed by the Southeast.
The West falls farther down the list with 48 total heat season power outages. California specifically had 44 of those outages during the time frame.
Most outages Southern California experiences don't fall in the major category the Climate Central study looked into. “The typical customer experiences one power outage less than once a year, and outages normally last less than two hours on average,” noted Reggie Kumar, spokesperson for Southern California Edison.
In 2023, equipment failure led outage causes for Palm Springs by more than 71% over weather.
The Adapting for Tomorrow: Powering a Resilient Future looks into findings from the Climate Adaptation Vulnerability Assessment (CAVA) while working towards a clean energy future. It states: "The cost to invest now is far less than the cost of inaction and will help hedge against the uncertainty society faces in the future.”
Kumar explained, “Climate change and other factors are driving unprecedented heat. We just experienced the hottest July on record. We know this is a concern and we continue to prepare for it. SCE will improve the reliability of the grid to meet customers' needs today and in the future as our load grows along with our ability to shape it with flexibility and efficiency as we meet California’s clean energy goals by 2045.”
If you should find yourself in an outage, or with the inability to cool down, there are cooling centers across the Coachella Valley. You can find a map of them here.
