The California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state's power grid, estimates peak demand this afternoon at 44,898 megawatts, which is a lot of power but well under the 50,201 MWs that will be available at 4 p.m. (here's the Cal ISO site). So there's no need for any special alerts, though that doesn't help the thousands of folks who are still without power throughout Socal. The outages seem to be mostly the result of area transformers that have fried by the heavier-than-usual loads. Temperatures are running 6-8 degrees cooler than yesterday and Wednesday should see a real break in the heat. (LAT)