County high-tech users worry about power

Blackouts would be 'catastrophic' August 4, 2000

By MARY FRICKER Press Democrat Staff Writer

The state's power crunch this week has generated worries in Sonoma County, where high-tech companies and other users have huge energy needs.

"It's a major concern," said Ken Pietrelli, who is in charge of facilities at Optical Coating Laboratory Inc., Sonoma County's fourth largest manufacturer.

"If we had an interrupted supply of electricity, it would have a catastrophic consequence. Our processes cannot tolerate an interruption," he said.

Demand for electricity has increased in Sonoma County at more than twice the statewide rate in the past decade, rising 25 percent compared to a statewide increase of 10 percent.

In the past year alone, power demand has increased 5.6 percent in Sonoma County.

Already, some companies are voluntarily cutting their usage in Sonoma County, as part of a statewide program in which businesses agree to cut back quickly when state regulators declare a Stage Two emergency, in exchange for lower rates.

Thursday was the fourth consecutive day that regulators called a Stage Two emergency, which kicks in when reserves fall below 5 percent.

"There are some major energy consumers in Sonoma County who have been impacted in the last few days," said PG&E spokesman Dave Imoto. He declined to identify the companies.

"Because they went offline during the peak periods in the last few days, we didn't have to go to Stage Three or rotating block outages," Imoto said. "They've been helping tremendously."

One of the companies enrolled in the voluntary program is Safeway, officials confirmed.

"We're very much involved in this current situation," said Safe-way spokeswoman Debra Lambert. "We don't compromise refrigeration or parking lighting or safety, but we reduce our power usage predominantly in (store) lighting. Consumers may notice some dimming."

Toni McWilliams noticed the dimmer lights while shopping Wednesday evening at the Windsor Safe-way.

"I thought it was great that they just jumped right in and did that," McWilliams said. "As a customer, I really appreciated it."

Conservation measures are important because they can help avoid a move to Stage Three, which triggers rolling blackouts.

California has never had a statewide Stage Three alert, although it did ask PG&E to implement its first-ever small rolling blackout June 14 in the Bay Area to deal with a localized shortage. Customers were affected for about two hours.

The length of a Stage Three blackout will depend on the severity of the shortage, PG&E spokesman Ron Low said. Power will not be cut to circuits that serve hospitals, fire departments and other essential services.

Blackout areas are not selected geographically, Low said. Instead, customers have been placed in 14 Northern and Central California "blocks," and outages will rotate among the blocks.

Although PG&E may make a general announcement, specific areas will not be notified in advance, Low said.

"If you had devious intentions and you knew a certain area was on the next outage block, you'd know burglar alarms would be off at that time," he said.

Customers can call PG&E to see if their loss of power is related to a blackout. They may need to identify their block number, which is printed on the lower left-hand corner of the first page of their PG&E bill each month, Low said

http://www.pressdemo.com/local/news/04power2_a16empirea.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), August 04, 2000