Businesses vie for blackout exemptions: The PUC must decide who should be spared, and the applicant list is very long.
By Carrie Peyton and Dale Kasler
Bee Staff Writers
(Published June 6, 2001)http://www.capitolalert.com/news/capalert02_20010606.html
Mixes for milkshakes and frozen coffees could spoil at ice cream parlors, sickening customers.
Seniors getting their hair done would have to leave their dryers and go home with wet heads, risking a chill.
Mall escalators could come to a sudden halt, endangering shoppers who lose their footing.
Those are among the health and safety risks cited by more than 10,000 businesses and government bodies asking state regulators to exempt them from rolling blackouts.
It is a list that mixes nursing homes and grocery stores, outpatient surgical clinics and beauty salons, dialysis centers and country clubs.
"A lot of people are treating this like a lottery," said Subodh Medhekar of Exponent Inc., the consulting firm sorting through exemption requests for the state Public Utilities Commission.
For many, Medhekar said, the rationale seems to be " 'I'm pretty sure I won't get exempted, but what's the down side? Let's put in an application.' "
Amid predictions that Californians could face dozens of rolling blackouts this summer, state regulators are trying to update a decades-old list of who should be spared if the lights go out.
The Alta Sierra County Club in Grass Valley should be among those whose power stays on, Sean O'Brien, the club's golf course superintendent, told regulators in a nine-page application.
The country club telephones could go out, making it harder to phone for help if someone has a medical problem while golfing, he said in an interview.
And if the golf course's irrigation pumps shut down, it would lose the ability to quell small blazes -- leaving it to rely on a fire station O'Brien said is about one-quarter mile away.
Placerville Dialysis wants an exemption, too. As many as a dozen people there can be having their blood pumped through an artificial kidney that cleans it when their own kidneys no longer function properly.
"When the power goes out, everything just stops," said manager Shirley Carpenter. "There is a way to manually return the blood by hand before it clots in the line. ... It would just be hectic."
It takes about five minutes of manual pumping to fully disconnect someone from a dialysis machine, Carpenter said. And some patients can help by operating their own pumps.
But, she said, "I'm sure it would be kind of frightening to have your blood out in the line and the power off, and they're pretty much tied to the machine."
Pam Chin, a hairdresser at the Loomis Beauty Salon, said the owner sought an exemption because people could get overheated if the air conditioning went out, and older customers getting their hair set could be chilled if the dryers shut off.
With about half the state already exempt from rolling blackouts, the question of who else should stay connected has become a delicate one for utilities, regulators and legislators.
Carl Wood, the PUC commissioner who has taken the lead on blackout issues, estimates that fewer than 1,000 more utility customers can be exempted before they overload the rolling outage system designed to take stress off the electric grid.
While about 6,000 customers are classified as "essential" by the state's two largest utilities, keeping them out of the blackout rotation also spares about 5 million other customers who are served by the same circuits.
That multiplier effect will have to be weighed by the consulting firm, by utilities and eventually by PUC commissioners, who are scheduled to vote in early August on who should be added to existing standards.
The rules will apply to the state's investor-owned utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co., but not to municipal utilities.
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District already rejected pleas for special exemptions from a medical lab, a veterinary hospital, nursing homes, medical facilities, businesses and residents. SMUD believes they can weather blackouts because they are not critical to public safety.
People have counted on having dependable electricity for so long that some have widely varying ideas of who can do without it safely, Medhekar said.
Of the more than 500 Baskin Robbins ice cream parlors that dot California, only five are listed on the PUC Web site as applicants for exemptions.
The site cautions that its list of 9,239 electronic applicants hasn't been checked for duplicates -- or fiction. It includes hundreds of outlets of the same drug store and supermarket chains, dozens of related nursing homes and more than 400 dentists. Another 1,200 commercial power users have applied by fax.
Among those who have confirmed they want out of outages are the grocery chains operated by West Sacramento-based Raley's, which said it took the action as part of united effort with all California grocers, who are worried about food spoilage.
Others in the mix are Fairfield's Westfield Shoppingtown Solano, formerly the Solano Mall, where officials sought the exemptions out of fear that shoppers would get injured if escalators came to a sudden halt.
The Yolo County Housing Authority asked for an exemption on behalf of its 700 dwellings in the belief that the utilities offer exemptions for low-income Californians, Executive Director David Serena said.
Serena added that many of the authority's occupants are older or disabled and could be endangered by a blackout.
Chevron Corp. acknowledged it couldn't show that a blackout at its refineries would present "imminent danger to public health or safety," but it asked Gov. Gray Davis to support legislation exempting makers and transporters for "critical fuels," saying a refinery shutdown would cut into the state's gasoline supply.
Some businesses acknowledged that their applications are a long shot.
"It's probably a stretch," said Amanda Leveroni, who owns Bacio Catering Co. of Chico, about her request to the PUC. "The public wouldn't be in danger.
"But we're a catering company -- somebody has planned for a year-plus for a wedding or some big event," she added. "I would be in such a huge situation. I'd have to send out for pizza." |
