California Independent System Operator Corporation

California’s August 2020 rotating outages were not a referendum on one fuel, one generator, or one agency. They were a short, severe demonstration that a monthly capacity certificate and a gross-peak reserve margin do not necessarily produce deliverable electricity after solar output declines, neighboring systems face the same heat, demand-response availability narrows, and real-time operators run out of contingency reserves. The accountability test is therefore hourly: who controlled forecasts, procurement, schedules, outages, imports, dispatch, customer disconnection, and proof that the evening net peak can now be served?