Southern California Edison Talks Beverly Hills Power Outages

BEVERLY HILLS, CA — Representatives from Southern California Edison met with a frustrated city council and Beverly Hills public on Tuesday to discuss recent outages, one of which residents say lasted over 30 hours.

Beverly Hills residents and elected officials have grown frustrated with what they report as increasingly frequent and prolonged power outages. Residents were particularly frustrated about an outage on Sept. 9, which affected over 200 customers in Trousdale and lasted over 24 hours, according to an agenda report prepared before Tuesday's council meeting.

SCE representatives acknowledged reliability in the area has "severely been deteriorating over the last several months" and addressed a number of local improvement projects, including increasing capacity on certain power circuits and appointing a special task force to diagnose the city's troubles. SCE representatives have attended multiple council meetings to discuss recent blackouts.

The city already wrote a letter to California Public Utilities Commission, which oversees SCE alongside other federal bodies. The council will consider further engaging with the commission through a formal complaint, public comment and "speaking with state legislators regarding appointments to CPUC and regulations for investor owned utilities," according to the agenda report.

Two circuits are at the center of recent power issues in Beverly Hills: the Harratt and Playboy circuits, which are both centered at the Doheny substation located on Sunset Boulevard near Doheny Road. These circuits directly affect the Trousdale Estates area, according to SCE representatives, but residents and council members noted outages have affected the entire Beverly Hills community.

The city's power is split between 51 circuits, 12 of which have been upgraded to higher capacity, according to Paul Grigeaux, Vice President of Transmission and Distribution.

One of SCE's immediate plans involves increasing the voltage capacity of the Harratt circuit, which is the only circuit at the Doheny substation that has not yet been upgraded, Grigeaux said. This upgrade would not necessarily decrease the frequency but would decrease the duration of outages — lower voltage circuits struggle to mitigate demand when other, upgraded circuits go out, Grigeaux said.

This upgrade would ideally be complete in March 2023, but the timeline is likely to change with unpredictable difficulties like to weather and other emergencies throughout SCE's large service area.

SCE representatives reiterated they were working hard to improve reliability in the area, but the work will take significant time.

"What I hope you hear today is a really transparent, open view of our process. We're not here to say the popular thing tonight. I know what these residents want to hear, I know what you want to hear — you want to hear that these power outages are gonna stop and they're gonna stop immediately. I can't tell you that. And the reason I can't tell you that is that we have to do the work for that to happen," Vice President of Local Public Affairs Larry Chung said. "In order for that to happen the frequency may stay the same or it may even increase, but we look at the duration as well and that will significantly decrease with the work we are doing."

Around a quarter-mile of Beverly Hills' SCE infrastructure sits in an area designated as a high fire hazard severity zone by CAL FIRE, which has contributed to recent outages, according to Grigeaux. Infrastructure in high fire severity zones are subject to additional restriction during windy weather events. SCE could consider enforcing or updating this stretch of equipment to make it less susceptible to weather events.

SCE will also assemble a special team to identify issues in Beverly Hills, Grigeaux said.

"We do have plans. We have been investing in the system for several years," Grigeaux said. "We believe we understand what the causes are ... but we want to make sure we don't leave any stones unturned."

SCE's repeated communications with the city have been inconsistent, frustrating and insufficient, according to Mayor Lili Bosse. She noted that promised completion dates previously communicated to city council were false, eroding trust between the two bodies. Outages continue to worsen despite SCE's implications otherwise, Bosse said. Bosse took issue with SCE's communication dark period between the hours of 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. every day, which is not expected to be corrected until December.

Resident Randy Simon noted the outages cause significant issues for residents, including locking them outside of electric gates and food spoilage in the refrigerator.

“None of us want to be here tonight,” resident Randy Simon said. “Bottom line, our power’s been going out way more than it should, and that’s SCE’s responsibility to immediately prioritize, diagnose, and repair. … Even one more outage is too much."

Trousdale Estates Neighborhood Association’s co-President Shahram Melamed emphasized that the outages cause significant safety issues should residents need emergency services during an outage. Other residents noted their safety concerns, including alarms and street lights going out.

“The truth of the matter is that this is a safety issue,” Melamed said.

Multiple residents suggested SCE provide some form of compensation to residents who have experienced outages. Residents and council members noted that Beverly Hills residents are paying for a service they are not properly receiving. Some public commenters suggested residents could stop paying their bills or even organize legal action in protest.

"You're not providing, it why should you get paid? If you cannot deliver the electricity, which is the basis for how you get paid, why should you get paid?" said Vice Mayor Julian Gold.

Chung said residents' payments are adjusted for outages, so residents do not pay for power that was not delivered.