Sometimes, keeping the power on means briefly turning it off — even when it’s hot.

Southern Californians know that summertime temperatures can be brutal, but that can’t keep crews from performing year-round maintenance and repairs on the electrical grid.

“Summer is one of the most important times to stay ahead of repairs and maintenance, because it’s when the electric grid is under the most pressure,” said Phillip Sonoqui Jr., a field supervisor for Southern California Edison crews working in the Palm Springs area.

As air conditioners and other appliances run longer, electricity use climbs, straining the grid. Electric equipment normally cools down overnight, but during heat waves, high nighttime temperatures and around-the-clock AC may not give it that chance. Over time, increased temperatures and heavy electricity use can wear down equipment.

“There’s never a good time to turn people’s power off,” said Sonoqui. “But by making needed fixes and upgrades, we’re preventing aging or overloaded equipment from failing, which can cause an unplanned outage that may affect more customers and take longer to repair, not to mention the safety risk that it involves.”

That is the kind of proactive maintenance that brought two SCE crews to a Cathedral City neighborhood recently even when the forecast threatened triple digits. Their job was to replace three deteriorating crossarms, which support power lines on utility poles, and upgrade a transformer, which lowers high-voltage electricity to a level homes and businesses can safely use.

The crews started in the morning with the temperatures already at about 90 degrees. By early afternoon, that had climbed well past 100, with high humidity making conditions even tougher.

SCE follows strict guidelines when temperatures rise. Maintenance outages are limited to five hours at 105 degrees and canceled at 113 degrees. SCE may also consider rescheduling work based on conditions and the urgency of the job. The Cathedral City outage nearly reached the cancellation threshold, but the temperature stayed just below it.

“Working in extreme heat is part of the job for our crews in the desert, so we plan for these conditions and take precautions to keep everyone safe,” Sonoqui said. “At the same time, we know how difficult it is for customers to be without power when it’s this hot. That’s why we do everything we can to keep the outage short.”

When possible, crews will bundle work orders so that they won’t need to return for multiple maintenance outages in the same spot. In this case, they combined the crossarm replacements and transformer upgrade into one visit and replaced all three crossarms while the lines remained powered, avoiding an interruption in service for that part of the work.

“We owe it to our customers to do as much work as possible while the lines are powered so we can minimize the outage time for them,” Sonoqui said.

The transformer upgrade, however, required a brief outage for about 15 customers. A larger transformer supports increased electricity use from new pools, larger air conditioners and accessory dwelling units while addressing low-voltage issues.

“We understand it’s an inconvenience, but these brief outages spare customers from longer ones down the line,” Sonoqui said. “We’re always working to complete the job as safely, efficiently and swiftly as possible.”

For more information, visit sce.com/outages.

Communications around electrical safety are funded by ratepayers.