CA Sets New Record For Power Use As Brutal Heat Wave Continues. How Are You Dealing?

Despite calls to con­serve pow­er, Cal­i­for­ni­a’s ener­gy demands were at an all-time high Tues­day. The extreme heat wave is cre­at­ing a big need for pow­er, so much that we blew past a record set dur­ing a heat wave 16 years ago. Cal-ISO, which oper­ates the state’s pow­er grid, first report­ed that ener­gy use in the state sur­passed more than 50,300 megawatts as of 3:09 p.m. Tues­day. That was 68 megawatts above the 2006 record. Ulti­mate­ly it hit 52,061 megawatts. Cal-ISO typ­i­cal­ly calls an alert when tem­per­a­tures are hot. Ener­gy con­sump­tion runs high­er dur­ing these times, so peo­ple need to cut down. But heat isn’t the only fac­tor. All of these issues can put a strain on our state’s pow­er grid. Mean­while, the Fairview Fire in Hemet explod­ed over Labor Day week­end killing two res­i­dents as they were try­ing to flee. Today on AirTalk, we’re joined by Eric Boldt, mete­o­rol­o­gist with the Nation­al Weath­er Ser­vice in Oxnard, Daniel Kam­men, pro­fes­sor of ener­gy at UC Berke­ley, and Jon Heg­gie, bat­tal­ion chief with Cal Fire, to dis­cuss the lat­est on SoCal’s heat wave, the fire rag­ing in Hemet, and the new pow­er use record set last night by Californians.