Power outages heat up colleges Published Thursday, August 3, 2000

Campuses voluntarily turn off electricity due to state's energy shortage.



By Matt Krupnick

Staff Writer

The only electricity present at the Claremont Colleges on Wednesday afternoon was that of summer school students finishing up their classes, and even that was fizzling.

Staff members and scholars at the schools sweated their way through a third straight day without power - and air conditioning - Wednesday as part of an agreement the colleges have with Southern California Edison.

The colleges voluntarily shut off electricity midway through the day, causing the few teachers on campus to find alternate sites for their classes.

And they were not alone. As a heat wave caused electrical demand to soar across the West, the nation's most populous state nearly ran out of power for the third straight day.

To reduce the strain on California's electric grid, regulators ordered utilities to curtail supplies to big commercial users that have agreed to cut their electricity consumption in times of shortage, such as the Claremont Colleges.

Still, the state was on the verge of imposing rolling blackouts of homes and businesses. That step has been taken only eight times around the country in the last 17 years, usually because of extreme weather or power plant failures, said the North American Electric Reliability Council, which supervises the Canadian and American power grid.

Students whose classes were forced to meet elsewhere and cancel some presentations bristled Wednesday at the situation.

"We pay more than $900 a unit to go there," Claremont Graduate University student Colleen Giulivo said, a day after her teacher-education class met in a pizza restaurant.

Operations at Cal Poly Pomona and Mt. San Antonio College also have been interrupted twice this week because of voluntary outages, while Chaffey College shut off its air conditioning the last two days to reduce its use of electricity.

The schools and approximately 1,000 other large companies and institutions served by Southern California Edison receive lower electrical rates in exchange for an agreement to shut down power for up to six hours on certain high-use days.

Edison officials can order contracted businesses to cut power as many as 25 times in a calendar year. If power reserves dip below 7 percent statewide, the utility tells certain companies to turn off the electricity, but all contracted businesses have power cut off if the reserves fall to 5 percent or less.

The state's reserve power margin has already fallen below 5 percent a half-dozen times on hot days this summer, forcing the Independent System Operator to begin cutting power to some big commercial customers. On Tuesday, the tightest day yet this summer, the reserve margin fell as low as 3 percent at 3:30 p.m.

The Claremont Colleges have participated in the program since 1986, leading to annual electricity cost savings of about 25 percent, said Dale Klein, director of the colleges' physical plant. The colleges had pulled the plug only once before this year, Klein said; there have been four outages already this year.

"It's a major inconvenience, but we're coping," he said.

Across the colleges, hand-written signs in windows told visitors that offices had closed early Wednesday. At Claremont Graduate University, Marilyn Ambrosini filed papers and answered phones in the otherwise empty administrative offices.

"A lot of my work is done on the computer," the senior secretary to the provost said in her dark office. "I'm just here to cover the office."

Cal Poly and Mt. SAC shut down Tuesday and Wednesday, making some administrators yearn for the return of the air conditioner.

"Right now it's 87 degrees and it's hot," said Marilyn Kaecke, Mt. SAC's director of student affairs, as she worked in her quickly warming office Wednesday.

Staff members at each of the schools were given warnings 30 minutes before the power shut down, allowing just enough time to print out important documents and shut off computers.

While thunderstorms were expected to bring minor relief to the Inland Valley on Wednesday night, continued high temperatures are predicted throughout the week, National Weather Service meteorologist Philip Gonsalves said.

Highs are expected to hit 100 degrees today and the 90s on Friday. Wednesday's high at Fairplex in Pomona was 93 and in Ontario it was 95, according to the National Weather Service.

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), August 03, 2000