With the threat of rolling blackouts and with some areas experiencing power outages, take a few minutes today to hit the ATM and gas station. I tried to get gas at the 76 on Fair Oaks & Watt this morning, but they were completely shut down due to a power outage earlier this morning. Even though they had power when I went there, their computer systems still were not working. Luckily, the Shell across the street was able to gas me up since I was running pretty low, but the clerk indicated that they’d had some issues in the power outage aftermath too.
This isn’t exactly a newsflash, but if we do have widespread blackouts, we won’t have access to basic things like gas stations, ATMs, and just about any other business that is dependent on computer systems. Not that people can actually count change, but it would be advantageous to have some extra cash on hand should you need to make purchases for which you’d ordinarily use your debit or credit card and to have a full tank of gas no matter where you need to go.
The Sac Rag 
I loved your remark: “Not that people can actually count change”…my wife handed the cash to a KMart clerk awhile ago and said to him “let me give you the six cents and you can just give me back one dollar.” You should have seen the lights flash behind his eyes…Whoa Dude! Like I can’t handle this kind of math without some help! He insisted we just take the coins! Too much of an overload for this dude to calculate.
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Don’t want to jinx anything by saying it’s unlikely SMUD will have rolling blackouts, but … well, it’s unlikely.
That’s because since the energy crisis SMUD has pulled away from Cal ISO and formed its own “control area.” SMUD has said it would act in support of the state power grid in case of emergency, but otherwise controls its own fate.
SMUD also has voluntary energy curtailment programs to give the local grid a break, such as Peak Corps for residential customers and others for commercial customers, but they haven’t gone to these programs yet. They are saying today that they might, however (go to http://www.smud.org, click on “power system status”). SMUD also brought its new Cosumnes Power Plant online in May, so that’s definitely helping.
Still, it’s always good to be prepared with cash and other “what ifs.” Maybe I’ll hit the ATM, too. And conserve power! 🙂
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