"Major storms on the West Coast have swung further south than they normally do," said Jon Tremayne, spokesman for San Francisco-based utility Pacific Gas and Electric.

California Department of Water Resources spokesman Don Strickland said that heavy rains in Southern California had replenished the region's reservoirs while snowpack in southerly areas was also "very good."

"It looks like southern California, which has had four or five dry years in a row, is going to have plenty of water," he commented.

Utility Southern California Edison, which is based in the Los Angeles suburb of Rosemead, said Friday it expects water resources for electricity generation this summer to be between 150 and 200 percent of normal.

California, with a capacity of about 12,500 megawatts, gets about 25 percent of its electricity from hydropower, well above the national average of around 7 percent.

The outlook contrasts with the Pacific Northwest, where utilities have already called for customers to conserve energy and warned of possible rate hikes due to sharply below normal hydropower supplies.

The Pacific Northwest is the leading US region for hydropower and receives about 60 percent of its electricity "from the sky" -- as the rain-fueled energy source is sometimes called in the industry.

SNOW SURVEY

The California Department of Water Resources conducted a snow survey Friday at three different elevations in the Sierra Nevada mountains and found results ranged from 140 percent to 159 percent of normal.

Strickland said that based also on information from other data collection points around the state, the northern Sierra Nevada mountains was 124 percent of normal, the central area 135 percent and southern region 152 percent.

California's hydropower system is about half the size of the Pacific Northwest's, where massive federal dams boost the capacity to almost 24,500 MW.

The Northwest River Forecast Center on Friday forecast that runoff through the Dalles dam in Oregon on the Columbia River will average about 70 percent of normal from January through July this year.

The Dalles, the next-to-last dam on the lower Columbia River, is a key point to measure the volume of water available for power generation in the Northwest.

San Francisco-based utility Pacific Gas and Electric, a unit of PG&E Corp, is the largest owner of hydropower in California with about 4,000 MW.

The utility is currently forecasting its hydropower supplies will be about 98 percent of normal with above normal readings for its southerly projects offset by a below normal outlook for projects further north, nearer the Oregon border.