By Bernie Woodall
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - With fires still causing concernamong California power grid operators, this week brings highheat that may lead to near-record electricity demand throughoutthe state, the grid manager said on Monday.
The California Independent System Operator asked consumersto curb their power use in the peak 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. periodTuesday through Thursday as the grid nears capacity.
The Cal ISO manages lines owned by the three biginvestor-owned utilities that handle 80 percent of the state'spower flow.
"This is going to be the first significant heat wave of thesummer," said Cal ISO spokeswoman Stephanie McCorkle. "Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday will be when temperatures spike, and thenthey should fall off a bit on Friday."
Fires in the Santa Barbara area have caused outages sincelast Wednesday and continue to concern utility workers onMonday, said Jane Brown of the line's owner, SouthernCalifornia Edison (SCE).
"The fire continues to burn in and around our lines," saidBrown, speaking of the 220-kilovolt Goleta transmission lineand the more local distribution lines. "It is very likely thatwe will have more power outages affecting large groups ofpeople."
SCE spokeswoman Nancy Williams said at 5 p.m. local time (1a.m. British time) that while no outages had occurred to thatpoint, it was likely about 48,000 customers will lose power onMonday evening as firefighters expected blazes directly underthe Goleta line.
The likely outages would affect the same area impacted onSunday in the Santa Barbara-Goleta area, Williams said.
Customers in the area are being told to "prepare forextended outages," Williams said.
SCE has lost some wooden poles that hold up both the 220-KVGoleta transmission line as well as distribution lines, sheadded. The poles are fast being replaced by utility workers.
HIGH DEMAND SEEN
Cal ISO power demand is seen approaching 48,000 to 49,000megawatts during peak hours later this week, McCorkle said.Those levels are near record demand on ISO-managed lines ofabout 50,270 megawatts from July 2006.
Monday peak demand on the Cal ISO system reached 43,918megawatts, and Tuesday's forecast peak is 48,810 MW, Cal ISOsaid. There were no formal alerts asking utilities to curtailgeneration or maintenance shutdowns.
In Sacramento in northern California, highs are expected tobe 105 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius) on Monday, 106 FTuesday, 108 F Wednesday, 103 F Thursday and 100 F Friday,forecaster AccuWeather.com said.
In the densely populated area east of Los Angeles known asthe "Inland Empire" temperatures will hit 100 F each day thisweek.
Of 1,781 fires at the peak of wildfire activity inCalifornia in the past two weeks, all but 330 have beencontained, the California Department of Forestry and FireProtection said. Those fires have burned more than 600,000acres (242,800 hectares).
Two big ones remain, including the one near coastal SantaBarbara.
SCE is a unit of Edison International based in Rosemead insuburban Los Angeles.
(Editing by Christian Wiessner and Braden Reddall)
