Aug 22 - McClatchy-Tribune Business News Formerly Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Steve Raabe The Denver Post

Colorado faces an increasing chance of a huge power outage because of constraints in the region's transmission system, utility experts said Monday.

The transmission constraints not only could lead to a catastrophic failure but are causing delays in developing new power generation, particularly wind farms, speakers said at the initial meeting of the Colorado Task Force on Reliable Electricity Infrastructure.

"During peak summertime periods, the system is extremely stressed," said Bruce Smith, executive director of the Colorado Energy Forum, a nonprofit research group. "There should be a sense of urgency on our part that everything is not fine." Rapid population growth in the Rocky Mountain West has put new demands on the electric system that formerly had enough spare capacity to handle plant shutdowns or problems with high-voltage transmission lines that deliver power from generating stations to local communities, Smith said.

"But we don't have the margin for error that we had in the past," said Smith, who retired last year after heading the Colorado Public Utilities Commission for 13 years.

He said it's not out of the question that the West could experience a massive power outage similar to the 2003 blackout that left large portions of the northeastern U.S. without power.

But the solution defies easy answers, with unanswered questions on who pays for new transmission, where it can be located and which governmental agencies control the process.

The reliability task force is the result of a bill passed in the Colorado legislature this year to "engage affected stakeholders to develop a comprehensive plan that addresses the state's future electric-infrastructure needs." Participants include utility executives, local government officials and wind-power advocates.

In testimony filed last week with the PUC, a wind-power group said lack of adequate transmission has been a key reason that Colorado consumers pay more than they need to for electricity.

Existing wind power has saved Colorado ratepayers $251 million in fuel and emissions costs since 1999, but consumers could have saved much more with more wind power, according to a study commissioned by the Interwest Energy Alliance, a coalition of wind-farm developers and turbine manufacturers.

Xcel Energy spokesman Tom Henley disagreed with the report's conclusion, saying Xcel has acquired as much wind power as is "appropriate for the generation mix."