Saturday, January 13, 2001 Print this story

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If Northwest Gets the Chills, California Could Feel Weak

Power: Dam operators might be hard pressed to share their energy supplies during cold weather.

By CHRISTINE HANLEY, Times Staff Writer

A cold snap may be all it takes to leave the Pacific Northwest hydroelectric plants too thirsty to keep rescuing California and keep its own customers warm. Drier-than-usual conditions, coupled with California's ever-swirling energy crisis, have already pinched water supplies to the brink in Oregon and Washington. "We're barely scraping by," said Mike Hanson, spokesman for the Bonneville Power Administration in Oregon. It sells power from 29 federal dams in the Pacific Northwest.

The moderate conditions have been a blessing as well as a curse, keeping residents in the regions served by BPA from turning up thermostats during a period when winter demand usually peaks. "It's been incredibly warm for us," Hanson said. "That could change on a dime." If it does, the BPA and other utilities across Oregon and Washington will be pressed into serving their own customers first, with cold weather driving up the stakes. "Space heating is the biggie," said Catherine Van Horn, spokeswoman for the Oregon Office of Energy. "Obviously, people can cut back on hot water without too much discomfort. But they can't cut back on the space heating."

The BPA helped California survive its first attack of the Stage 3 jitters on Dec. 7 and came through again for Thursday's near-miss. "They were absolutely crucial," said Jim McIntosh, who is in charge of power schedules for the California Independent System Operator, which channels power to utilities throughout the state. "We would have interrupted customers for sure if we didn't have it." For years, excess power generated by dams on the abundant rivers of the Northwest has moved south in the spring and summer, when river flows are plentiful. California typically repays the favor in the winter by sending surplus energy north to help meet the Northwest's heating demands. But there's no energy to spare in California this year. In a worst-case scenario, a cold spell would strike the Northwest while California was facing another Stage 3 alert.

Under such circumstances, California would be left searching out of state for deliveries at a time when the BPA dams might be pushed to their limits. "We'd have to push the dams real hard. We can go that way for quite a while before we have to have rolling blackouts" across the region, Van Horn said. The BPA swaps electricity with California as long as there are no negative impacts on its Northwest service reliability, its finances or the fish population in regional rivers. Under this 2-to-1 trade agreement, California's electricity grid must give back twice as much electricity as it gets, the first half of it within 24 hours and the balance within two weeks. So far, Hanson and other officials say California has been keeping up with its end of the bargain. That doesn't mean the juggling act is getting any easier in the Pacific Northwest, where hydropower is the main source of electricity and electricity is the main source of space heat.

Right now, the Columbia River system that feeds BPA's generators is at only 60% of normal levels. "That is very bad," Hanson said. And there are ecological concerns. The rivers are flowing at the minimum rate required to protect salmon eggs and fish migrations, Hanson said.

http://www.latimes.com/business/reports/power/lat_cold010113.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 13, 2001