Stephanie McCorkle is with the California Independent System
Operator or Cal-ISO. She says when the San Onofre Nuclear
Power Plant in San Diego County was taken offline, 2,000 megawatts
of power stopped going to the state's power grid. This
affects San Diegans more than most.
MCCORKLE: "We're only going to have a reserve margin in the local area of about 13 megawatts -and that's counting on all of the older power plants in the region being available to us ."
McCorkle says there's also a transmission bottleneck in Southern California. The state grid has plenty of power, but there aren't enough lines to deliver it to the affected areas.
Cal-ISO is already running commercials to encourage conservation. If the power demand becomes too much, the commercials will be replaced with an urgent Flex Alert call to conserve.