Desert residents mysteriously receiving too much electricity

Thursday, May 3, 2001, ©2001 Associated Press

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2001/05/03/state2150EDT0342.DTL&type=news

(05-03) 19:01 PDT JOSHUA TREE, Calif. (AP) -- Residents of five California desert towns were asked to turn off major appliances Thursday after Southern California Edison discovered that too much electricity was flowing into the area.

Edison was trying to determine the cause of the problem, utility spokesman Steve Hansen said. Residents and businesses in Morongo Valley, Joshua Tree, Landers, Amboy and Twentynine Palms were asked to leave idle washers, dryers and other large appliances because they were vulnerable to damage from the power surge, Hansen said.

``There is a line up there in the Morongo Valley that is recording an inordinate amount of power,'' Hansen said. Hansen said he did not know how many customers were affected, only that the affected area was about 90 square miles of desert communities.

High Desert Medical Center in Joshua Tree was forced to switch to its backup generators because of the power surge. The hospital isolated its normal power supply and switched to emergency power systems when the problem was discovered at 8:50 a.m., said Russ Harris, director of plant operations.

All nonessential equipment was shut off and patient care was not affected, he said.

©2001 Associated Press

-- Swissrose (cellier3@mindspring.com), May 04, 2001

Answers

On Tuesday I had my Battery Backup howling, it turned out that 128V was on the house line. 117V is the correct level +/-5%.

Power co. came out and put in a transformer to 'limit' the juice, now only getting 126V!

Must be sun spots! :)))

-- (perry@ofuzzy1.com), May 04, 2001.

While you can't see it anymore because it was on yesterday's chart, this post from Swissrose may be the reason for my posting the following yesterday::

Sudden load spike on CALISO controlled grid: http://www.caiso.com/ems_large.html

Temperatures are climbing in SoCal due to Santa Ana (offshore) Wind compressional heating.

-- PHO (owennos@bigfoot.com), May 03, 2001

-- PHO (owennos@bigfoot.com), May 04, 2001.

Wait til Paula picks up on this. "It must be a Y2K embedded problem"

-- John littmann (LITTMANNJOHNTL@AOL.COM), May 04, 2001.