Power Problems to spread this summer.
"Sunday February 25, 1:00 pm Eastern Time
California Power Woes May Spread
By LESLIE GORNSTEIN
AP Business Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- As Californians brace for a summer of anticipated power shortages and the possibility of rolling blackouts, experts are warning their neighbors in states across the West to be ready for the possibility of having to share the pain.
Natural gas supplies are tight, reservoirs are low, and a heat wave could drive up demand for electricity.
``It could get bad all over the West this summer,'' said Craig Pirrong, a finance professor who specializes in energy markets at Washington University in St. Louis. ``The likelihood of outages is still greatest in California, because that's where the major deficiency of generating facilities are.
``But things over the entire West could be dicey this summer.''
California has been coping with short power supplies for weeks and twice endured short periods of targeted or rolling blackouts in January.
The power alerts were lifted last week, thanks to the availability of more imported electricity and the return to service of power plants that had been down for repairs.
But energy experts predict the state will run short again, particularly when air conditioners crank up in the hottest months.
All the Western states share a power transmission grid, but the area most likely to face problems similar to California's is the Northwest.
Washington, Oregon, Idaho and western Montana depend heavily on hydroelectric power, an energy source facing a double challenge this year.
The Bonneville Power Authority has been forced to draw down its reservoirs to spin generators in recent months under a federal order requiring energy suppliers to sell to California. The order has been lifted, but reservoir levels are perilously low.
That wouldn't be such a concern in a year of normal rain and snowfall, but the snowpack in the Cascade Range this year is only 60 percent of normal. Less runoff means less water refilling reservoirs to power turbines.
``We are looking at having a hard time of meeting our own requirements this summer,'' said Ed Mosey, spokesman for the Bonneville Power Administration, which supplies roughly half the power for utilities in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and western Montana.
Normally, the agency helps out California during the summer, Mosey said. This year, he said, ``Hopefully, we will be avoiding blackouts here, but we won't have any power to spare.''
And because the other states in the West are linked through their common power grid, there is the potential that problems also could affect Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Arizona.
If California's situation is severe enough, it could suck electricity from the rest of the grid and set up a ripple effect in other states' utility systems.
``It's a scary thought, but the electricity is tied together like a bunch of high-tension rubber bands,'' said Kellan Fluckiger, chief operating officer for California's Independent System Operator, which manages 75 percent of the state's transmission system. ``If you fool with the tension in one place, it fools with the tension on the other end.''
``A limited blackout could become fairly widespread,'' said Dick Watson, director of the power division of the Northwest Power Planning Council, a policy advisory board.
California's peak demand for power is expected to exceed supplies from May through September, according to the Independent System Operator. The projected deficit will range from 3,030 megawatts in May to as high as 6,815 megawatts in June. It takes about 1,000 megawatts to power 1 million homes.
California officials are taking steps to avoid widespread problems this summer.
Gov. Gray Davis said Friday he has agreed on a tentative plan with Southern California Edison to buy the cash-strapped utility's power lines for an estimated $2.7 billion.
Legislators have been working on bills intended to result in more power plants in the state, and fears that natural gas supplies in Northern California would be depleted by the end of February eased when more suppliers agreed to deliver gas to Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
Still, the state's goals will be tough to meet by summer, however, said Judah Rose, managing director of ICF Consulting, a Washington, D.C., firm specializing in energy issues.
``I have never seen any place in the world that has been able to solve that kind of problem in a couple of months,'' he said." |
