State helped cause blackouts in June, consumer group claims BY STEVE JOHNSON Mercury News A Sunnyvale consumer group accused state energy officials Monday of helping cause the June 14 blackouts in the Bay Area to justify new power plant construction and ``drive up the price of electricity'' at the behest of power generating companies.

Californians for Renewable Energy offered only inconclusive bits of evidence to support their allegation, and state officials swiftly denied it.

But one piece of the group's evidence, as described in a complaint filed with the Federal Energy Commission, was particularly intriguing: Indications that a large amount of California-generated power might have been shipped to Oregon on June 14, the same day that power was cut to nearly 100,000 Bay Area customers.

Mike Boyd, president of the non-profit group, said he can't prove that electricity was shipped out of state because California officials have refused to give his organization the data it needs to make that assessment.

Nonetheless, he said, government data his group has obtained indicates that 3,675 megawatts -- enough for about 3.7 million homes -- was scheduled to be shipped to Oregon on June 14. He criticized state officials for failing to declare a Stage 3 statewide emergency on that day because such a declaration would have given those officials authority to halt the transfer of that electricity, he said.

``Basically, they did some things wrong when they turned off the power,'' Boyd said. ``I think they have to be held accountable.''

The group accused the Independent System Operator, which oversees the state power grid, and the Power Exchange, which runs an electricity auction house, of having ``contrived the June 14, 2000, rolling outage'' to ``maximize generator profits.'' The complaint seeks a federal investigation of the blackout and asks the commission to ensure that consumers are refunded for any expenses they incurred as a result of the incident.

The Federal Energy Commission already is investigating California's energy troubles this summer. Last week, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. asked the federal agency to compensate consumers for any power price abuses that federal investigators determine were caused by power-generating firms.

Jan Smutny-Jones, who chairs the Independent System Operator board, said he couldn't comment on the complaint in detail until he has read it and added that he didn't know if any California power was transferred to Oregon on June 14. But even if it had been, he said, it wouldn't have contributed to the blackouts because those were primarily due to some key high-voltage lines that fed power to the Bay Area overheating.

``There was voltage collapse in the Bay Area, and it wouldn't have mattered'' if power was sold to Oregon that day, Smutny-Jones said. In fact, he said he had been told that there was additional power available in California that could have been delivered to the Bay Area on June 14, but ``we just couldn't get it there'' because of the high-voltage-line problem.

Smutny-Jones also said that a Stage 3 emergency -- which would have triggered statewide blackouts to relieve stress on the power grid -- could not have been declared anyway, because temperatures and power use in Southern California were relatively low that day.

Power Exchange spokesman Jesus Arredondo also declined to comment in detail about the charges because he hadn't seen them. But he stressed that officials at the Power Exchange would have no reason to do the things the Sunnyvale group has claimed.

``The California Power Exchange is a non-profit,'' said Arredondo. ``What the price of energy does, we don't benefit from. A conspiracy theory usually has a little bit more validity when those supposedly conspiring have a mutual interest in the outcome.''

Boyd said much of the information his group used in filing the complaint was obtained through the California Public Records Act. The details about the scheduled transfer of California-produced power to Oregon, he said, came from the non-profit Transmission Agency of Northern California and the U.S. Department of Energy. However, officials familiar with that data could not be reached for comment Monday.

In addition to the issue of power allegedly being scheduled for sale to Oregon, the Sunnyvale group criticized state officials for allowing several California power plants to be out of service for scheduled maintenance on June 14. The complaint also includes reference to an allegation made in a report to Gov. Gray Davis about the blackout, which was prepared by the heads of two other state agencies.

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