Researchers respond to California power outages

Abstract

Twice last month, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, faced power outages in their labs. The campus’s power utility, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), has been implementing rolling blackouts throughout the state during particularly hot, windy weather in an attempt to reduce the risk of damaged electric lines sparking fires in the parched landscape. From Oct. 9 to 12, the utility cut power to more than 700,000 customers in northern and central California, including on the UC Berkeley campus. The company disconnected power to the campus a second time Oct. 26. And these situations could happen again. Rising global temperatures, longer wildfire seasons, and an ever-present earthquake risk are making power outages more common for California universities and researchers. For researchers who rely on temperature-controlled equipment to store biological samples and expensive reagents, power outages represent not just safety concerns and lost time in the lab but also the