Most blackouts in California are not driven by electricity shortages but rather by hot and strong wind events that lead electric utilities to shut off certain transmission lines in rural areas to avoid sparking wildfires. This distinction probably doesn't matter much to those who have their power cut but it is important to actually fixing the root cause.

There was a particularly nasty heat wave in the western US in 2020 that did lead to load shedding due to a shortage of electricity. That was the first time California had load shedding since 2011 IIRC, and it did not repeat in 2021.

> Hence the rolling blackouts the last few years and more are expected for this summer.

California has had two days with rolling blackouts since 2001, August 14-15 of 2020.

It has had public safety power shutoffs in some areas since 2019 to prevent fire risk during dry, high-wind conditions, but those are a different issue than rolling blackouts and unrelated to energy generating capacity.

Is Tres Amigas still moving forward? Last I read it got canned.

Those interconnections are basically small scale arbitrage connections setup to take advantage of the difference in spot prices. They aren't close to the scale needed to make a dent in a power shortage.

That's DC power not AC needed to power homes, and even then only 2 minor junction points.

The power plants and substations are still needed to act as a giant DC-to-AC inverter. So if the plants are offline then the grid is effectively down, as it was in the Feb 2021 blizzard.

Does maintaining a system for political reasons remove the technical drawbacks?

We’re mostly engineers on this board, have you never had to build a substandard system to meet the political needs of a higher up and then watched it blow up in their face as reality doesn’t care about political needs?