It's Deja Vu, All Over Again. Remembering 1948
current trend & thread,
Here's something I happened upon following up on the California Energy Markets newsletter. A bit of historical perspective on the current situation. :)
newsdata.com
[[Note: Click on "Bottom Lines" for the article.]]
The Blackouts of '48
The economy was booming. People were moving into California at record rates, swelling the population by 10 percent in just two years. Electricity consumption averaged 9 percent growth per year. But there were shortages. It was a low-hydro year, and there weren't enough new power plants being built. There were rolling blackouts. Auto dealers couldn't light up their lots at night. Interruptible customers were cut frequently until both company owners and labor unions rose up against Pacific Gas & Electric.
Worst of all, there was no night baseball.
The year? 1948.
In a paper researched by Stuart Ross and delivered to the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1973 (in the midst of another energy crisis), Ross detailed a story from the past that sounds curiously like current events.
In the post-World War II era, when many were expecting a recession, GIs, like my own father, took their military pay and veterans' benefits and headed for sunny California. Tacky subdivisions sprang up like dandelions in the most unlikely places. Instead of a recession, a postwar economic boom fed the state.
But it all came to a near-screeching halt in 1948 when it just didn't rain enough to feed PG&E's reservoirs. In the years 1947 to 1950, precipitation fell below 50-year-average rainfall. And in 1948, 67 percent of electricity was derived from hydro in PG&E territory.
Ross totaled up the damage: There was compulsory rationing aimed at 20 percent demand reduction; Contra Costa County chemical plants had interruptible contracts and were curtailed much as PG&E curtailed customers early this year; there were rolling brownouts--large customers went without power on a scheduled basis--and a huge new federal dam that created Lake Shasta didn't help because the government did not feel it was its responsibility to dig a private utility out of its supply shortage hole.
"Stringent curtailments were imposed on public, commercial and outdoor lighting. Show windows in stores were ordered blacked out. Ballparks, theaters, new car lots and public monuments were put under tight restrictions," according to Ross. He said that the lighting cutbacks did not save that much energy--about half a percent--but the curtailments were a political move.
Fifty-three years ago, the state appointed Robert O'Brien as the "Emergency Power Director." Among his first actions, O'Brien ordered utilities not to cut off major customers unless failing to shed load would "imperil future operations." Residential customers were cut back 20 percent instead of 10 percent.
O'Brien found that extending daylight savings time past September helped, but lowering system voltage levels did not, as it was a labor-intensive stopgap. Local committees were established to review applications for new load.
Perhaps in contrast to California's new energy czar, S. David Freeman, O'Brien believed strongly in free markets and felt that the way to get out of the dilemma was to build more power plants, not decrease consumption.
The market, apparently, did call the shots. Despite mandatory curtailments, as soon as restrictions were lifted because of heavy rain and new power plants in 1949, conservation disappeared. "Demand was merely pent-up, not modified," Ross observed.
In eerie similarity, the federal government seemed to get a kick out of thwarting the state's plans for dealing with the crisis. The Bureau of Reclamation, Shasta Dam's owner, didn't want to sell to PG&E. According to Ross, the agency thought its first duty was to municipal utilities. PG&E objected. The federal government agreed to sell to PG&E on a day-to-day basis, but at high prices.
Another eerie coincidence was the first version of PG&E's plan to barge in a power plant. In the late 1940s, PG&E bought the engine half of a ship that had been wrecked off the coast and had it towed in and converted to a 5,000 KW plant in Humboldt County.
What we haven't seen yet in 2001 is a labor backlash, but it might not be that far away. In the 1940s crisis, there were no "out-of-state generators" to blame, but unions were not at all cozy with PG&E. As blackouts cascaded through steel mills and breweries, the unions lashed out at the utility for being deceptive and hiding the true depth of power shortages. Unions called for more public power, like the recently created Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which in December 1946 finally prevailed in its long struggle to carve out a piece of PG&E's service territory.
"The next time PG&E cries duplication to Congress in order to stop the development of public power in our state, we predict a horse laugh will go up in California that will be heard in Washington without the aid of ear trumpets," maintained the California State Federation of Labor [J.A. Savage].
The following Bottom Lines columns are also currently available online:
Environmentalists Worry that More Power Means More Smog/ Issue No. 615 / April 27, 2001
The Law of Unintended Consequences/ Issue No. 613 / April 13, 2001
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