Imperial Irrigation District prepares to save energy during heat wave

IMPERIAL COUNTY, Calif. (KYMA, KECY) - The Imperial Irrigation District (IID) said it's alerting customers to help save energy when the county hits triple-digit temperatures this summer, so there won't be any blackouts.

When customers see a "conserve alert" from IID, it’s time to take action. That is the message IID wants everyone to know before a blackout strikes the county.

“So what we ask during those conserve alerts is that people would actually conserve energy and that does help keep reliable for everyone else," said IID Public Information Officer Robert Schettler.

IID said for two years, the county has done an incredible job at conserving energy.

But if the system is stressed and reaches an orange or red level, there may be a blackout.

"There is a chance that they may or may not be enough energy and if we ever do reach that stage, that sends out a different alert that says, 'look the situation is so bad,' we are going to have to implement outages every 15 minutes," said Schettler.

But the county is no stranger to blackouts.

“Labor day in 2020, there was an excessive heat wave that hit the whole state of California and what it did was, we had a delivery of energy that was expected that did not get delivered during that time. We did have to initiate the low shedding which means we had to take customers off for 15 minutes," explained Schettler.

IID said it has already started sending alerts.

These will also go out through social media, the IID website, and via text.