Small Snow Pack in Sierras Raises Summer Electricity Concerns in California
By Andrew Galvin, The Orange County Register, Calif. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
A lack of snowfall in the Sierra mountains in the past seven weeks has led officials at California's electrical-grid manager to become more concerned about whether there will be adequate supplies of power to meet demand on hot days this summer.
Since the grid manager released its summer power forecast on April 16,
"the hydro situation in particular has not gotten any better and may have
gotten a little worse," said Gregg Fishman, a spokesman for the California
Independent System Operator. "It's not turning out to be a great hydro
year."
Fishman stressed that Cal-ISO officials remain "cautiously
optimistic" and don't expect to have to call for rolling blackouts, as they
did seven times during the California energy crisis in 2001.
Meanwhile, officials at Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas &
Electric, the two utilities that together serve most of Orange County, expect
demand in their service territories to reach record highs this summer because of
population growth and a resurgent economy.
Statewide, demand is up about 4 percent this year, according to Cal-ISO.
The forecasts underscore the difficult situation in which the state finds
itself since the 2001 collapse of its ill-fated experiment with partly
deregulating the electricity market.
Today, with the Legislature and the California Public Utilities Commission
still rewriting the rules that regulate electricity in the state, few power
plants are being built.
SDG&E has proposed adding five generating resources to its supply
portfolio, including new plants at Escondido and Otay Mesa. The
natural-gas-fueled plants would be the first full-size generating plants to be
built in San Diego County in decades.
The Escondido plant would be owned by SDG&E, while the Otay Mesa plant,
which is owned by Calpine Corp., would sell power to the utility under a 10-year
contract.
The proposal is pending before the CPUC, which has scheduled a vote for
today.
Edison is building a gas-fired plant near Redlands.
Hydro power accounts for about 16 percent of the state's generating capacity.
It tends to be used mostly at times of peak demand, including the hottest days
of the summer.
According to a report by the California Energy Commission, the statewide snow
pack was just 48 percent of average on May 6, and melting steadily. However,
reservoir levels should enable hydro energy production to reach 85 percent of
average this year.
"The big question for us is: Will we have to begin drawing on it early
in the year to meet high peaks, or will we be able to save much of that for
later in the year?" Fishman said. "We'll have to wait and see how the
season plays out."
Another problem facing the state is that its aging transmission grid creates
bottlenecks that prevent available power from getting to where it is needed.
On one hot day in March, Cal-ISO officials declared a transmission emergency
after power lines in the central part of the state became overloaded, preventing
power from being moved from north to south. Southern California Edison was told
to "shed load," or rotate customers off the grid for 20 minutes,
affecting 70,000 customers.
A week later, on March 15, the ISO said the outage could have been avoided if
its control-room dispatchers had acted more quickly to call on power plants to
ramp up output.
It took disciplinary action against the personnel who failed to follow
procedures.
Still, the incident pointed up the role of transmission constraints in
creating power shortages.
"The transmission system is being stressed more than it has been in the
past," said Ron Nunnally, director of federal regulation and projects at
Southern California Edison.
The stress occurs partly because most power plants are being built outside
population centers, forcing more power onto transmission lines that lead to
those population centers, he said. A number of new plants that serve California
are in Arizona and Nevada, he said.
SDG&E is seeking CPUC approval for a transmission line that would enable
it to bring in more power from Arizona and Mexico, spokesman Ed Van Herik said.
SDG&E officials expect that demand from its customers at some point this
summer will exceed the record of 3,960 megawatts reached in August 1998, Van
Herik said.
A megawatt is enough power to serve about 750 homes in summer.
Edison also expects demand to top the record 20,136 megawatts it saw last
summer, Nunnally said.
One factor driving the higher demand in Edison's territory is that much of
its customer growth is in inland and desert areas where summers are hotter and
use of air-conditioners predominates, he said.
Anaheim, the only city in Orange County to have a municipal utility, had
forecast a peak summer demand of 550 megawatts, but hit that on May 3, a
particularly hot spring day, said spokesman Mike Ebbing.
The city has 586 megawatts of available power.
"Barring anything really out of the ordinary, which is always a
possibility -- cross your fingers -- we should be fine" this summer, Ebbing
said.
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