As California’s hottest and longest heat wave begins to melt into the record books, there will be little relief for Southern California Edison crews working around the clock to protect customers from potential power outages due to climate change-related extreme weather events.

“This heat wave has been like nothing I’ve ever seen in my career,” said Tyson Silva, the operations section chief lead with SCE’s Incident Management Team. “The response from our crews has been phenomenal. We’ve pulled in everyone available, from SCE crews to contractors, to manage this event.”

Crews assigned to work on substation repairs have been deployed to the field to help fix heat-related outages, while crews that generally work during the day have been working extended hours overnight. Transformers have not had an opportunity to cool down with nighttime temperatures remaining so high, leading to an unusual number of equipment failures.

As of Thursday morning, SCE crews and contractors have installed 492 new transformers, replaced 32 power poles and repaired 300 sections of electrical wire since the heat wave began eight days earlier on Aug. 31. By Tuesday, 226 SCE and contract crews were working to respond to the heat wave.

“If this were our first or second day on the job, we’d be really struggling,” said Pat Cardoza, an SCE lineworker toiling to replace a pole in Carson on Tuesday during the peak of the heat wave. “Your body gets acclimated. We make sure we take breaks. Drink Gatorade. Get in the (air-conditioned truck) cab at lunch. When you stop sweating and start cramping, that’s an early warning sign.”

So far during the nine-day heat wave, 295,000, or about 2%, of SCE’s approximately 15 million customers temporarily lost power. “That is well above normal, but not nearly as bad as it could have been,” said Norbert Hirsch, SCE’s Incident Management Team situation unit lead.

Customers have also played a large part in avoiding state-mandated rotating outages by conserving electricity during a string of 10 consecutive Flex Alerts, initially from 4-9 p.m., then at times extended from 3-10 p.m. as the squeeze on power resources worsened.

So have battery storage resources.

"Incredible to see battery storage setting record after record of grid support during this intense heat wave," tweeted Jill Anderson, SCE executive vice president of Operations. "We saw batteries discharging more than double last year and orders of magnitude more than what was available to the grid in 2020."

While another Flex Alert is in effect for Friday night, the focus is shifting to another series of potentially serious threats to SCE’s service area. Several wildfires, including the deadly Fairview Fire near Hemet, continue to burn.

“And now everyone’s monitoring the impact of Hurricane Kay coming up the coast from Mexico,” Hirsch said. Initially, Kay is expected to bring high winds to Southern California, which could lead to Public Safety Power Shutoffs to prevent dry vegetation from contacting electrical equipment and starting a wildfire.

Approximately 50,000 customers in seven counties — Kern, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Tulare and Ventura — are under consideration for PSPS outages Friday and Saturday. SCE pre-patrol teams are in the field monitoring circuits for dangerous conditions.

As Hurricane Kay moves closer, heavy rain will become the most significant concern through Sunday, with the main dangers being flash floods and debris flow.

The recent triple threat of high heat, fierce winds and hurricane-driven rain may be unprecedented for Southern California, but SCE is preparing to respond to similar conditions occurring more regularly in the future, as outlined in the company’s groundbreaking Climate Adaptation Vulnerability Assessment.

It predicts a five-degree increase in average temperatures, a seven-fold increase in extreme heat and fewer but more intense precipitation events by 2050. Its companion white paper Adapting for Tomorrow: Powering a Resilient Future calls for increased collaboration among industry, governments and communities to successfully adapt to climate change while transitioning to an equitable clean energy future.