"Due to the instability of the state's power situation, we still must prepare for the possibility of a loss of power to the core campus," said Janet Hamilton, vice chancellor for administration.
Hamilton said that energy conservation programs for the core campus also will be expanded in the coming weeks, to allow the campus to continue to be responsive when PG&E requests the campus to voluntarily conserve power when the state is experiencing a Stage II power alert.
In a letter to the campus last Friday, PG&E's Senior Tariff Analyst Laura Meister raised similar cautions.
"While PG&E strives to provide the most reliable electric service possible, please be advised that PG&E does not and cannot guarantee a continuous or sufficient supply of electricity or freedom from interruption … Even outside the rotating outage scenario, you could experience an unanticipated and unannounced interruption in your service due to numerous factors."
PG&E urged the campus to secure more sources of backup power generation "to enable your facility to operate safely during outages of short duration, or at a minimum, to safely shut down your operations."
The exemption granted late last week also does not apply to some outlying UC Davis offices, research units and housing complexes that remain in blocks 3 and 14 and are subject to rotating blackouts.
The core campus of UC Davis - roughly an area bounded by Putah Creek or I-80 on the south, Highway 113 on the west, and the city limits on the north and east - will now be part of a group of entities that form Block 50. This group of agencies and businesses, declared essential customers under guidelines established by the California Public Utilities Commission, are not part of the rotating outage system, but could lose power in the event of a catastrophic statewide grid failure. Members of Block 50 would also be the first to have power restored in the event of such an emergency, according to Dave Hather, PG&E's account representative for UC Davis.
The possibility also remains that the campus's status as an essential customer could be reversed. PG&E follows strict criteria outlined by the CPUC, including agencies that provide police and fire services, emergency broadcasting stations, hospitals, water and sewage treatment facilities and aircraft operations.
Should the CPUC revise its criteria for essential customers, PG&E would be required to re-examine the campus's essential customer status, Hather said.
Hather complimented UC Davis on its cooperation in the voluntary power reduction requests. "In all truth, the campus has been fantastic in reducing its load voluntarily during our Stage II reductions. I applaud the university and hope you keep up the good work."
In its appeal to PG&E, the campus stressed the potential impact rotating outages would have on research projects, animals and people.
The campus also cited the potential safety hazards to the 35,000 people who occupy the core campus and the high cost to California taxpayers if the campus were to lose power. The costs would include lost research, equipment and time.
The campus Facilities Services department also inventoried for PG&E a significant number of critical campus buildings and emergency services that would have no backup power should an outage occur, including the Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital.
"We are grateful for PG&E's consideration of these detrimental impacts," Hamilton said. "But it isn't time for us to rest. We must double our conservation efforts, and continue with our emergency preparedness plans."
UC Davis was the first campus in the UC system to seek - and be granted - an exemption from rotating outages. With the exception of UCLA, which receives power from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and will not be experiencing outages, all of the other UC campuses are subject to the rotating loss of power. UC's five medical centers, including UC Davis Medical Center, are protected from outages by virtue of being large hospitals and essential customers under the CPUC criteria.