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Despite California power crunch, downtown skylines still lit up

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN - AP Business Writer Date: 01/24/01 12:47

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Cruise around a bend on a freeway or trudge to the top of a hilly street in the San Francisco Bay area, and suddenly it comes into view -- a downtown skyline ablaze with specks of light.

Normally, it's an impressive sight, but these days it raises a troubling question: Why are office lights being left on all night during California's power crisis?

As utilities impose rolling blackouts, scrape their reserves for power and beg consumers to turn off porch lights, plenty of juice is being wasted in offices long after everyone has gone home.

"Every little bit adds up," Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spokesman Jon Tremayne said. "And when you've got 20 floors, 30 floors, 40 floors of lights and computers, it really adds up."

Late Monday night, nearly every skyscraper in downtown San Francisco glowed with squares of light, including almost all the lower half of the landmark Transamerica Pyramid. A spokeswoman for the company that runs the 853-foot building refused to comment.

Last Thursday, evening commuters plowing through traffic in Mountain View could see into scores of illuminated but unoccupied offices at Nokia's Silicon Valley complex. Thursday was the second straight day of rolling blackouts in northern California.

That doesn't mean the Finnish cellphone company is cavalier about California's power crunch, spokeswoman Virve Virtanen said. In fact, she said, the company has taped over light switches in offices and installed motion sensors that turn lights off when rooms are empty.

When all the lights were on Thursday night, security guards or janitors probably were making their rounds, she said.

On an average weekday, a skyscraper with 700,000 square feet of office space uses between 2 megawatts and 30 megawatts of electricity, depending on what's going on inside, PG&E's Tremayne said.

At night, he said, those buildings tend to use 80 percent less than that -- between 400 kilowatts and 6 megawatts -- a significant amount, even though the fluorescent lights used in many offices are relatively efficient. On average, one megawatt can power about 1,000 homes.

Tremayne said it was impossible to do a statistical comparison to see whether power usage is down in big office complexes during the crisis, because too many variables -- such as weather or changes in business operations -- affect the numbers.

But he believes conservation is increasing, especially with last week's rolling blackouts and the threat of more this week.

Most lights in the downtown San Jose headquarters of software maker Adobe Systems Inc. are now dimmed or turned off by 7 p.m., and employees are asked to shut their computers off before leaving, spokeswoman Autumn Blatchford said.

That means any yellow glows behind the building's tinted windows after hours probably come from a software developer burning the midnight oil.

"If they do see the lights on, chances are there's somebody working their butt off," Blatchford said.

http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/printer.pat,local/37751431.124,.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 24, 2001