Get Used to It! Alerts, blackouts predicted for next 2 years Jonathan Curiel, Greg Lucas and Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writers Monday, January 22, 2001 ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/22/MN114506.DTL

Californians will have to deal with the possibility of energy alerts and rolling blackouts for the next two years, a state official said today.

"For the next couple of years . . . any day could (bring) difficulty," said Kellan Fluckiger, chief operating officer with the Independent System Operator,

which oversees California's power network.

The state will be particularly vulnerable in the summer, when electricity use is high, said Fluckiger.

"In the summertime, when we are at a high level (of use), I believe we will have a number of situations where we have Stage 3 alerts and outages," he said.

"During the next two summers, we will have a situation where we will have power watches and emergencies."

During a Stage 3 alert, which happens when power reserves fall below 1.5 percent of available capacity, the ISO can order Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and other utilities to initiate rolling blackouts.

For the seventh straight day, state officials today declared a Stage 3 power alert -- but blackouts were not expected to be necessary, Fluckiger said.

Among the reasons for Stage 3 alerts in Northern California, he said, were idle power plants that are getting maintenance.

"We have an extraordinary high number of units that have broken and need repair," he said.

Until more power plants are built in California, the potential for alerts and blackouts is possible, said Fluckiger.

Yesterday, a power glitch in the Pacific Northwest briefly cut off electricity to 50,000 to 70,000 customers in the Central Valley, but authorities said the failure was not a renewal of California's rolling blackouts.

The customers, served by municipal utilities in Sacramento County and a few surrounding communities, lost power for about 20 minutes, starting at 2:15 p.m. , said ISO spokesperson Stephanie McCorkle.

McCorkle said the system operator was forced to throw the switch after an equipment failure at a Bonneville Power Administration substation in Oregon sent a sudden surge of electricity into a California transmission line.

No PG&E customers were affected, she said. PG&E spokeswoman Maureen Bogues said the system operator issued a blackout order to the utility yesterday afternoon but withdrew it before it took effect.

Authorities in the affected areas said residents had been calling about the brief blackouts but there were no emergencies.

The Modesto Irrigation District, a public power agency that serves 95,000 customers, had to cut service to about 5,000 ratepayers after getting a request from PG&E shortly after 2:30 p.m.

"This is the third time we've done this," said district spokeswoman Maree Hawkins. "We did it Wednesday, Thursday and today. But we're rotating the outages through different areas."

In Modesto, the blackout lasted about 18 minutes. "Before I could get on the radio and warn people about four-way stops at intersections, it was over," Hawkins said.

Fluckiger called on residents and businesses to conserve more water, because water supplies help power companies in Northern California create electricity in hydroelectric plants.

"Conservation is clearly critical," he said.

Gov. Gray Davis, meanwhile, is expected to soon name a person to help speed construction of new power plants and shave the state's long-term energy deficit.

The move is the latest by the Democratic governor to try to combat the state's electricity woes, which have led to the first peacetime blackouts in California history.

"This would be someone in the governor's office who would reach out to the different agencies involved to get more plants online," said Steve Maviglio, press secretary to Davis, who did not identify the appointee.

Davis and lawmakers have been attacking the state's energy shortages on several fronts.

The key to a long-range solution is making sure there is enough power to meet California's demand.

Central to that is creating more power plants.

Since March 1998, the California Energy Commission has approved nine power plants.

Of those, five are under construction and are expected to create 2,368 megawatts of new electricity by the end of the year, according to the commission.

During one of last week's Stage 3 alerts, the state was short of the electricity it needed by about 14,000 megawatts.

California consumes about 164 million megawatt hours a year, according to the ISO.

Northern California is chronically short of energy ranging from 4,000 to 5, 500 megawatts every hour of each day, according to the system operator.

The shorter-term strategy of Davis and lawmakers is to reduce the reliance of utilities on the spot market, where they have been paying far more for electricity than they can recoup from their customers.

That has driven both PG&E and Southern California Edison $12 billion in debt and raised the specter of bankruptcy.

Last week, Davis signed legislation allowing the state to spend $400 million to buy electricity for the next two weeks.

That stopgap measure would be replaced by another bill, being refined by the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications committee, which would allow the state to enter into long-term contracts to buy electricity. Davis hopes lawmakers will send him that bill before the end of the week.

Davis, who has been criticized for not acting earlier, has now been trying to exercise more personal control over as many aspects of the state's power crisis as possible.

Chronicle staff writer Charlie Goodyear contributed to this report.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 22, 2001

Answers

It looks like this situation is finally sinking in to Californians. There is no short term solution to this situation, unless power generation plants can be put up in record time. We all know that is not possible.

California needs MEGAWATTS not state bailouts and such. I see nothing in these plans being bandied about that will produce more power or water in the reservoirs.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 22, 2001.

This article kind of goes along with my note above. Looks like a long dark tunnel to me.

Jan. 22, 2001

Power wait hinges on new plants By TIM MORAN BEE STAFF WRITER (Published: Monday, January 22, 2001)

There's light at the end of the power-crisis tunnel.

The problem, says Rob Schlichting of the California Energy Commission, is that customers may have to turn it off -- at least until the end of that tunnel is reached.

The Energy Commission is the state agency that licenses power plants. The state's ongoing energy crisis is caused, in part, because the number of new power plants built in the past decade is lacking.

But that's about to change. The Energy Commission has approved nine new power plants since 1998, with a total capacity of 6,278 megawatts. That's enough energy to power more than 6 million homes.

Another 14 power plant projects -- with 7,736 megawatts on the way -- have applications pending before the commission.

An additional 10 projects, including the massive 1,100-megawatt Calpine project near Tracy, have been announced but haven't started the licensing process. All are natural gas-fired generators.

The Modesto Irrigation District also is in the early stages of planning a natural gas generation plant next to its existing Woodland Generation Station in Modesto. That plant would be operational in 2003 if the licensing and construction go smoothly.

But why hasn't the state been building power plants in the past 10 years?

Jim Detmers, managing director of operations at the state's Independent System Operator -- which runs the power grid -- has suggested a lack of vision and planning.

Others have suggested that overzealous environmental regulations and red tape caused the problem.

Neither is true, Schlichting said. State regulators have been aware of growing power use and have been alerting power companies about it for more than a decade, he said.

But state legislators and regulators have also been discussing deregulation since 1992, Schlichting said -- and that put a damper on power plant investments.

Energy providers weren't willing to invest a half-billion dollars to build a power plant without knowing what the post-deregulation rules would be, Schlichting said.

"It's not fair to say people were not planning ahead. They were making decisions on good, solid business sense," he said.

The deregulation legislation was approved in 1996, and the commission began receiving power plant applications in 1997, Schlichting said.

The fact that nine of them have been approved in the past two years is proof that environmental regulation and red tape are not holding things up, he said.

Also in the past decade, there has been an overabundance of cheap power available in the West, Schlichting said. That surplus left no financial incentive for utilities to invest in new plants.

As the economy across the region heated up, the excess energy disappeared. Now, the utilities are playing catch-up.

It takes at least three years to get a major power plant up and running. The licensing process takes one year, and construction another two years.

Some of the plants approved since 1998 are expected to come on line this summer; others are a year or two away.

A 1,048-megawatt plant in Kern County is expected to be operational by November; a 500-megawatt plant in Pittsburg in Contra Costa County will start producing power in July; and a 500-megawatt plant near Yuba City in Sutter County will be ready by August.

A temporary 500-megawatt plant in western Kern County is also expected to go on line this summer.

But is that enough to save the state from a miserable summer? It depends who you ask.

The Energy Commission believes the state has enough generation to squeak by this summer, with perhaps some Stage Two alerts but no rolling blackouts.

That projection depends on how hot the summer gets, Schlichting said, and what kind of water year the region has.

The projection also depends on how well the energy market works, Schlichting said.

"This is power that is available," Schlichting said. "If they refuse to sell it to us, that's a different story."

Others sharply disagree.

The Independent System Operator believes the state faces a significant shortfall this summer -- and calls the Energy Commission forecast overly optimistic.

The new plants don't come on line until midsummer, the conservation assumptions are too high and the numbers for industrial power customers willing to be interrupted may be inflated, according to the ISO.

Tom Williams, director of public affairs for Duke Energy North America's Western Division, was more blunt.

"It's going to be a mess this summer," he said. "The Energy Commission is wrong."

The situation won't ease until 2002, Williams said.

Duke Energy bought three Pacific Gas & Electric Co. plants in 1998. Duke has been upgrading the plants and is generating as much power as possible, Williams said.

While there is disagreement over when the power crisis might end, everyone agrees there is only one solution that will get the state through the short-term problem.

"The only quick fix is conservation," Williams said.

http://www.modbee.com/metro/story/0,1113,232227,00.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 22, 2001.