South California Faces Summer Power Challenge
US: May 15, 2008
LOS ANGELES - Southern California's electricity system will be challenged
this summer, and power emergencies may result if an extended drought leads
to massive wildfires, the main US electricity reliability watchdog said on
Wednesday.
Southern California is the area that most concerns analysts at the North
American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC), which on Wednesday issued its
summer 2008 outlook.
Of Southern California, NERC said, "capacity margins will remain tight.
Significant amounts of imported power are required to fortify capacity
margins and preserve reliability, resulting in heavily loaded transmission
lines into this area during peak conditions.
"As a result, unplanned major transmission or generation outages, or extreme
temperatures/demand may lead to resource constraints."
NERC, of Princeton, New Jersey, is responsible for monitoring the
reliability of the power grid in the United States, Canada and parts of
Mexico.
NERC said voluntary conservation and on-call interruptible loads will likely
be necessary more often than usual this summer.
As always, the biggest factor in how much demand will strain the power grids
in California and the United States is the weather.
NERC said nationwide, US temperatures were 12 percent warmer than normal in
2007 and 10 percent warmer than normal in 2006.
Last October, wildfires in San Diego County threatened a major transmission
line and caused it to go off-line as the San Diego area nearly averted a
power crisis,
More wildfires could exacerbate an already precarious situation in
California this summer, NERC said.
"Drought conditions persisting in Southern California, Nevada, eastern New
Mexico and western Texas currently appear to have no impact on reliability,
though potential for wildfires as a result of dry conditions can threaten
infrastructure and will be monitored throughout the summer months," said the
NERC study.
The California Independent System Operator, manager of the power grid on
which flows 80 percent of the state's electricity, forecast a summertime
peak demand of 49,071 megawatts, NERC noted.
The all-time peak demand in California was reached in July 2006 at 50,270
megawatts.
Cal ISO also saw a 1-in-10 chance that hot weather will increase that peak
load forecast by 3,000 megawatts, thus reducing the capacity margin to less
than 10 percent without additional power purchases.
Cal ISO spokeswoman Stephanie McCorkle said the grid manager agrees with the
NERC assessment that the system needs to be under a careful watch this
summer for Southern California. But she said it would take an unlikely
confluence of events to create blackouts.
That would mean unexpectedly low imported power from outside California,
high generation and/or transmission outages on a hot day, McCorkle said.
"We have more tools in our toolbox than we have had," said Cal ISO. "We have
more demand-response to tap now," said McCorkle, referring to customers that
voluntarily cut use at times of high demand, often in turn for lower power
rates.
In addition to high-use business customers, many residential customers have
signed to have thermostats monitored remotely.
(Reporting by Bernard Woodall; Editing by David Gregorio)
Story by Bernard Woodall
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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