Energy crisis follows heat wave in Northeast

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Energy crisis follows heat wave in Northeast

Millions of people are told to turn off air conditioners and lights, though danger of blackouts is low.

July 26, 2001

By KATE BERRY The Orange County Register

The energy crisis hit the Eastern seaboard on Wednesday, as a sweltering heat wave caused power prices to skyrocket and forced consumers from Washington, D.C., to Boston to mimic the precautions taken in the West.

"Mother Nature threw us a hot and humid curveball," said Ellen Foley, a spokeswoman for ISO New England, based in Holyoke, Mass., which manages the electric grid in a six-state region.

Millions of consumers in 12 states from New England to the mid-Atlantic were told to turn off lights and air conditioners as temperatures hit 95 in Boston and 93 in Washington. New York state avoided Wednesday's crisis by importing power from Canada. Northeast energy officials said there was no real danger of blackouts, despite record electricity demand.

Spot prices in several Northeastern states hit a cap of $1,000 a megawatt-hour for the first time this year. Meanwhile, temperate weather in California caused spot prices to fall to $65.92 a megawatt- hour - or 6.5 cents a kilowatt-hour - compared with prices of between $250 and $400 a megawatt-hour most of this year.

The about-face has led some energy experts to predict that California's energy crisis is spreading. "The old saying is: 'As California goes, so goes the rest of the country,' " said Jesus Arredondo, director of regulatory affairs at NRG North America, a power supplier.

If the East Coast heat wave continues and consumer prices start to rise, federal regulators might be forced to examine the Northeast market, where prices under deregulation have typically fallen, said Frank Wolak, an economics professor at Stanford University.

"It just takes hot weather for the same phenomenon that occurred in California to occur in the Northeast," he said.

Wolak believes the California crisis was caused by a flawed federal plan to deregulate. Rather than create a workable market structure that would benefit consumers, each state was left to its own devices, with corporations and municipal utilities given carte-blanche by federal regulators, he said.

"Right now, everyone can still say the problems are only in California," Wolak said. "But if it happens in the Northeast, they'll have a hard time blaming it on our 'flawed' deregulation plan."

Despite earlier predictions that California would suffer up to 235 hours of rolling blackouts this summer, the state has weathered the crisis with just six outages statewide, the last on May 7. Cool weather, fewer plants offline, conservation and federal price controls in the West have kept prices in check this summer.

In the Northeast, which also deregulated its electricity markets, price caps are far above California levels, at $1,000 a megawatt-hour. But energy officials say higher prices there won't cripple utilities because just 20 percent of energy was ought on the spot market, compared to about 95 percent that was bought on the spot market in California last year. In addition, power-plant construction never endured the decade-long hiatus in the East that it did in California.

http://www.ocregister.com/news/northeast00726cci.shtml

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), July 26, 2001

Answers

Having a Heat Wave Garden State Wilts Amid Power Failures, High Temperatures The Record, Bergen County, NJ ( July 26, 2001 )

Weather watcher Bob Ziff is confounded.

So far this summer, snow has fallen in Saudi Arabia, meteors have created a spectacle in the skies of the northeastern United States, and with July nearly gone New Jersey this week had only its second heat wave.

"With May starting out so hot, I thought we would have a heck of a hot summer," Ziff said, "but we haven't had a string of seven or eight hot days." Temperatures at Newark International Airport hit 93 degrees on Monday, 96 on Tuesday, and 97 on Wednesday. No new records were set, however.

The short-lived heat wave or, perhaps more accurately, heat wavelet should be gone by today with the arrival of a cold front.

But on Wednesday, the Public Service Electric and Gas Co. faced one of its heaviest loads of the summer. John Griffith, a PSE&G spokesman, said statistics were not immediately available, but the power demand was easily the year's largest, and "one of the highest peak days in a long time."

The stifling heat contributed to a pair of power outages one in Passaic County, the other in Bergen plus some uncomfortable conditions at Bergen County's new administration building.

About 4 p.m., a wire separated from a circuit on a power pole between substations in Clifton and Wayne, Griffith said.

The roughly three-hour blackout left Khan Kwon, manager of a 7 Eleven on Browertown Road in Paterson, without the use of his Slurpee machine or cash register. He had to ask customers not to open the freezer doors and ordered a power generator from headquarters. Before the backup arrived, however, the power was restored.

"It's been annoying," Kwon said.

In Bergen, about 1,700 homes in Fort Lee and Leonia were without power for about 75 minutes.

The midday power failure knocked out several traffic lights, causing tie-ups, police said.

The outage began at 11:15 a.m. while utility workers were doing maintenance on a circuit at a substation in Leonia, said Leslie Cifelli, a PSE&G spokeswoman.

The workers shifted the power load from one circuit to another, but the load proved unusually high because so many air conditioners were on because of the heat. The power surge blew out the second circuit, causing the first to fail as well, Cifelli said.

Wednesday's high temperatures were particularly unwelcome at Bergen County's spanking new administration building, where a power surge caused air conditioning in some departments to conk out.

About half of the building went without air conditioning until workers were able to restart it at 4 p.m., said public works director Anthony Scolpino.

Because half of the building did have air, employees propped open doors and turned on fans to tap into the cooler air in neighboring departments.

The year's first heat wave, in early May, saw three consecutive days with 90-degree temperatures. But with summer's arrival came air patterns that resemble those usually seen in the fall, Ziff said.

"If you don't like the weather, just wait a few days," he said. "It will change."

This summer has already had 10 days over 90 degrees, compared with eight at the same date last year. However, there has not been sustained sweltering heat, said Ziff, of Ramsey.

Odd, but perhaps to be expected in a summer in which hundreds of people on the East Coast flooded 911 centers with reports of an orange or red fireball and sonic booms. The sightings are being attributed to a possible meteor, astronomers say. And abroad, a French newspaper reported this week that a snowstorm blitzed a Saudi hill resort in the southern Asir Province.

"What else can happen?" Ziff asked.

Staff Writers Peter Pochna, Shannon D. Harrington, and Eman Varoqua contributed to this article. Staff Writer Yung Kim's e-mail address is kimy(at)northjersey.com

http://199.97.97.163/IMDS%PMAINTL0% read%/home/content/users/imds/feeds/bellsuper/2001/07/26/REC/0000- 0701-KEYWORD.Missing



-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), July 26, 2001.


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