The Beverly Hills City Council discussed the latest series of power outages in the Trousdale Estates and what steps can be taken to tackle this perennial problem at its July 16 regular meeting.
Outages on July 3 were caused by breakdowns in aging equipment in two electrical circuits, while some repairs were delayed by flooding in an underground power vault, Public Works Director Shauna Epstein reported. Remedies discussed include creating a new above-ground power vault and adding an additional electrical circuit to the Beverly substation.
The information Epstein provided was based on a phone conversation that she, City Manager Nancy Hunt-Coffey, Mayor Lester Friedman and Councilmember Craig Corman had with representatives from Southern California Edison (SCE) last week.
According to Epstein, the first outage began at 8 a.m. on July 3 and affected 1400 customers, the majority of whom had their power restored by 11:40 a.m. It was caused by a failed piece of equipment in an underground vault for the Playboy electrical circuit, Epstein reported.
Another outage took place later that day due to a bad underground cable in the vaults of the Hilton electrical circuit. In this case, 1,000 customers experienced an approximate 12-hour power outage beginning at 10:50 p.m., while a handful of customers experienced a 26-hour outage.
“The Hilton circuit was a much more significant outage and what really took long for this [to be repaired] was the fact that the vaults that they needed to go fix were submerged with water, so they needed to take the time to extract the water before they could do the work,” she said.
In the meeting with SCE, councilmembers and city staff learned that SCE does not have a system for tracking the age of its equipment.
“One of the most revealing things, at least for me, was the fact that they don’t have a replacement program for aging infrastructure, and that’s not just in Beverly Hills, that’s systemwide,” said Friedman.
Corman concurred with this concern and expressed a desire to work with SCE to develop a better way to preempt when equipment needs upgrades.
“If we could ever get them to do a proactive program of replacing aging equipment on a progressive basis, that would be desirable,” he said. “Whether we have the ability to get them to do that is another issue.”
Two other possible solutions discussed were to create an above-ground vault for the Hilton electrical circuit and to add an additional circuit to the electrical system running from SCE’s Beverly substation. Councilmembers expressed their support for both ideas.
An above-ground vault wouldn’t necessarily prevent future outages, but it would allow power to be restored in a timelier manner as groundwater would no longer need to be drained before maintenance is performed.
The addition of an extra electrical circuit could help prevent future outages by providing an alternative source of electricity to customers when another circuit encounters an issue.
SCE has not committed to installing this additional circuit, but representatives told the city that the company is currently exploring the idea. If the project goes forward it will not be completed until 2027.
The ongoing challenge the council faces in addressing these outages is that SCE holds control over the running of the city’s electrical grid. Council has repeatedly put pressure on SCE to address failures in the city and members reiterated their commitment to doing so in Tuesday’s meeting.
“I think one thing that is for certain is we must keep the lines of communication open and keep the pressure on, because it does seem like keeping that focus is, right now, the best tool we have,” said Councilmember Mary Wells.
Previous outreach efforts by the city have prompted SCE to install more tie lines, which connect electrical circuits and spread power across a greater area. Since then, the Trousdale Estates has seen a decrease in the frequency of outages.
In 2023, former Mayor Dr. Julian Gold created the Mayor’s Citywide Electrical Resilience Ad Hoc Committee to explore ways to improve the city’s electrical infrastructure and create more electrical independence. Friedman has committed to continuing this work throughout his term.
