California Transmission glitches add to woes

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Transmission glitches add to woes; today may be tough Filed: 01/23/2001

By JENNIFER COLEMAN

The Associated Press

SACRAMENTO — Transmission glitches added to California's power woes Monday as grid officials again struggled to keep the lights on and lawmakers worked on relief plans that could pass mounting utility debts onto ratepayers. Regulators predicted a tougher day today.

Unless a substantial amount of electricity was located overnight, Northern California was slated for up to four hours of rolling blackouts affecting up to 500 megawatts — enough for 500,000 homes — from about 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. today, the Independent System Operator said.

"We're looking everywhere for energy," said Kellan Fluckiger, the ISO's chief operating officer. "We're looking under every rock and bush like we always have been."

Several factors led to the bleak outlook.

The most striking: Just three weeks into the new year, Pacific Gas & Electric has reached the limit of hours it can shut off power to "interruptible" customers, Fluckiger said.

Those are businesses and others that agree to accept outages during times of tight supply in exchange for lower rates. With those customers shut down for several hours daily last week and several hours Monday, by evening PG&E had reached the annual limit of 100 hours of such outages.

That means the ISO will have to find the 300 megawatts from that source somewhere else, Fluckiger said. One megawatt is enough to power roughly 1,000 homes.

In addition, a key hydroelectric plant near Fresno was running out of water; a transmission glitch in Oregon persisted and could take several days to fix; power use goes up as the week progresses; and fewer electricity bids came in than the ISO hoped, Fluckiger said.

Meanwhile Monday, consumer groups, watching for any sign customers will be forced to help finance a multi-billion-dollar bailout of California's two biggest utilities, gave Gov. Gray Davis' office more than 5,000 signatures from consumers refusing to pay for one.

"We see the cancer spreading, if you will," said Graham Brownstein of The Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco-based group.

California's disastrous utility deregulation has produced ever-increasing problems.

The ISO has declared rolling blackouts in Northern California three times in the past week, and called a Stage 3 alert early Monday, marking a week straight with electricity reserves near or below 1.5 percent.

Thanks to conservation and the return of several newly repaired plants to service, the ISO expected through Monday to avoid blackouts like those that darkened thousands of businesses and homes for several hours last week.

However, the newly restored plants were in Southern California and transmission limits slowed the ISO's efforts to direct their much-needed power north, Fluckiger said.

"The ISO is caught in the middle, caught in a system not improved in three years," ISO spokesman Patrick Dorinson said.

Meanwhile, lawmakers worked on several potential solutions.

The Senate Energy Committee continued working on a proposal by Assemblyman Fred Keeley that would put the state in the electricity business for up to five years, buying power at low rates and selling it directly to consumers.

Keeley said his plan would buy time for the state's two largest utilities to restore their credit while lawmakers worked on long-term fixes to the state's botched deregulation laws.

Other proposals ranged from having the state acquire the transmission systems of Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric to making the state the owner of their dams and hydroelectric plants.

Under both plans, the utilities would donate those respective assets to the state. In exchange, the state would take on the responsibility of buying any additional power needed to serve the utilities' customers. No price tags were immediately available on either plan.

Supporters were hopeful the state could get enough money from the sale of hydroelectric power to make up for the electricity it would have to purchase to meet the needs of PG&E and SoCal Edison customers.

http://www.bakersfield.com/oil/Story/280163p-261199c.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 24, 2001

Answers

Huh? "Supporters were hopeful the state could get enough money from the sale of hydroelectric power to make up for the electricity it would have to purchase to meet the needs of PG&E and SoCal Edison customers."

How would it make sense for CA to sell power from the hydro dams in order to buy power from other sources? Perhaps they hope to sell the hydro power at high spot prices and buy the other power cheaper on long-term contracts. But hydro power is "base load" and therefore most suitable for long term use or sale, not for spot sales. Can somebody explain this, please?

-- Barb Knox (barbara-knox@iname.com), January 24, 2001.


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