“…The overloaded grid promptly crashed, causing blackouts to spread across the region and into Mexico. The lights did not come back on until the following morning. The wind was blowing at only 8mph and the sky was partially overcast. So, California’s lauded sources of renewable energy were of little help.
If anything, they were part of the problem. Critics point out, with some justification, that California’s energy strategy of focusing on conservation and expanding intermittent sources of renewable energy—while ignoring the urgent need for more base-load generating capacity close to big cities—was the primary cause of the grid failure.
The wider issue is that the original voltage spike which triggered the monster outage should have been isolated at the Yuma substation in Arizona. …” Reliability of the Grid