Thank you, California ISO and all those who work hard to make sure the California grid stays operational despite historic heat waves.
With so much of the West gripped over the past two weeks by a persistent and historic heat wave, I could not be more pleased and proud to say that the California ISO and balancing authority areas throughout the Western Interconnection have gotten through it with no extraordinary actions needed and with bulk grid reliability fully intact. Summer weather brings a multitude of challenges in the West and around the country. The additional resources added to the grid and all the hard work and preparation before summer arrives are truly paying off in real time. We saw the Western Interconnection reach a new high peak load of 167,988 megawatts at 5:10 p.m. on Wednesday and with strong coordination and communication and sharing of resources we worked through it. The Western Energy Imbalance Market continued to be an effective tool to help balance supply and demand in the wider Western footprint by enabling transfers among balancing areas participating in the market. At various times, the ISO area provided export transfers to other areas of up to 3,000 megawatts (MW). Also, on July 8 and 9, the ISO area supported a significant volume of exports reaching up to 8,000 MW, and became a net exporter in several hours. Throughout the event, the ISO market honored all high-priority exports and wheel-through transactions. This speaks volumes about the hard work and strong coordination of the last several years. I want to extend a big thank you to all of our colleagues at the state agencies, our partners and customers and all the grid operators at the ISO and across the West for the great work in getting us through two solid weeks of extreme heat while keeping the lights on.