The grid operator’s call to Californians to reduce their energy consumption on Wednesday, July 28, between 4-9 PM averted possible outages, the California Independent System Operator announced July 29. It had called for a flex alert the afternoon of July 27 because of expected high temperatures in the interior of Northern California and spiking energy demand midweek, primarily from air conditioning use.

Legislation to require investor-owned utilities to allocate the benefits of their legacy resources to community energy and other providers, which pay for proportional shares of them, failed this session. SB 612 by Sen. Anthony Portantino was turned into a two-year bill by Assembly Energy & Utilities Committee Chair Chris Holden after he pulled it from a vote on the Assembly floor. Earlier, it passed the Senate floor on a 33-6 vote.

California Public Utilities Commissioner Cliff Rechtschaffen was pitched as one of the state commissioners to serve on the new Federal-State Task Force on Electric Transmission being created by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s June 17 order. FERC and state commissioners are to confer on the “relationship between rate structures, costs, accounts, charges, practices, classifications, and regulations of public utilities subject to the jurisdiction of such state commissions and FERC, including through joint hearings,” FERC order notes. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners proposed nine other state representatives, in addition to Rechtschaffen, from across the U.S. to serve one-year terms on the federal-state transmission task force. FERC must officially appoint the state commissioners.