Politics & Government

Outage Blamed on Faulty Switch, Not Shut Nuke Plant

An SDG&E spokesman says a switch shut off, throwing 18,000 into darkness.

It was a problem with a single switch at the San Mateo substation in south San Clemente

The outage had nothing to do with the , said Duane Cave, a spokesman for San Diego Gas & Electric.

"It has nothing to do with generation," he said. "It all has to do with having a fault in the distribution system, either a cable or a piece of equipment."

Find out what's happening in San Clementewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The Thursday outage was ; both outages were attributed to malfunctions in the grid.

Everyone's power was back on by early Friday morning, Cave said.

Find out what's happening in San Clementewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station shut down in January after a radioactive steam leak

The Independent System Operator, the statewide group that handles the allocation of electricity throughout the state,

SDG&E asserted earlier this summer, however, that

But at least one local anti-nuclear group has speculated that the utilites would cause artificial blackouts to make the case for continued operation of the plant, and individuals on Twitter and the Patch comment boards have offered similar speculation.

If there were blackouts caused by a lack of power from San Onofre, according to past statements by SDG&E's Cave in public meetings, they would likely happen during the final days of a prolonged heat wave. Any potential blackouts of this type would probably come in the middle of the day, when everyone is using air conditioners.


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