Heat Triggers Power Outages for Thousands in Pasadena

Extreme high heat caused equipment failure at Pasadena’s power plant Friday, triggering rolling blackouts that affected up to 8,800 customers before power was fully restored, officials said.

Pasadena Water and Power implemented rotating outages shortly after 4 p.m. as temperatures hit 107°.

“Just after 4 pm today, the extreme high heat caused equipment failure at the power plant. This caused the need to implement immediate rotating outages, for one-hour periods,”  PWP said in a statement.

At the peak of the crisis, more than 90 separate outages were recorded. Each lasted about an hour.

PWP announced full power restoration at 5:49 p.m.

“Crews have stabilized the system and rotating outages have concluded,” the utility said on social media.

During the blackouts, the Pasadena Fire Department responded to three elevator rescues, seven fire alarms and two transformer fires. It is not known if any of these incidents was related to the outages. No structure fires were reported.

Despite Pasadena’s emergency, the California Independent System Operator reported the state’s power grid remained stable.

Pasadenans seemed to take the outages in stride.

On Pasadena Now’s Facebook page, many complimented PWP’s handling of the emergency.

“As a resident who was affected, the response and support that PWP supplied was EXCELLENT,” S. Deming wrote.

“PWP is vastly better than Edison. You’d be waiting days for Edison AND they don’t respond. PWP is pretty responsive, I’ve called in the past, a human answered, gave me an estimate of the outage & were pretty right on,” D.P. Wetrich commented. “Thank you line crews!!!”

L. Brewer pointed out “remember it’s our responsibility to be prepared for disaster including power outages.”