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More stories by this authorCalifornians may be facing rolling blackouts all summer - but that doesn't mean they have to be kept in the dark about them
A slew of sites launched this weekend, like Emergency Digital Information Service (EDIS) are designed to give California businesses and residents at least some advanced notice of possible rolling blackouts in the state.
"What we've done is allowed consumers to get updated information and outage bulletins," says California State Office of Emergency Services spokesperson Eric Lamoureux. "We have agreements with three separate companies that consumers can subscribe to. The alerts can be sent to their e-mail, PDA or pager."
The three companies, MetroCall, which handles the pages as well as e-mail services Incident.com and Blackoutinfo.com, get their alerts from a number of sources including Governor Gray Davis, the state's Independent System Operator (ISO), or individual power companies such as San Francisco-based PG&E.
The EDIS is not new. The infrastructure is ten-years-old. Lamoureux says the only upgrades the OES needed to do was to add some additional server's at the state's Teale Data Center in Sacramento.
The notices vary between each of the services, most allow for 48, 24 or a one-hour notice of an impending outage. Some even let you know what stage alert the state's power reserves are at.
A Stage 1 Alert is called when operating reserves are less than seven percent of what the state has purchased for the day. A Stage 2 Alert is less than or equal to five percent and a Stage 3 Alert less than or equal to one and one half percent.
In addition to the OES's EDIS service, the ISO Monday launched its own Daily Outlook site, letting people know how much power the state has on hand for the day.
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