Hot-wiring the nation's electrical grid

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Hot-wiring the nation's electrical grid Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune Publication date: 2000-08-25

"The talking motion picture will not supplant the regular silent motion picture." -- Thomas Edison, 1913

Just as a great mind like Edison's might not have envisioned our current world's insatiable appetite for "the talkies," the inventor would be even more baffled by our overwhelming hunger for that which makes those films -- and just about everything else today -- possible: electricity.

Electricity is the pulse of modern society. It gives us light, cools our homes and powers a U.S. economy -- and a California economy -- that is ever more dependent on computers and other high-tech, plugged-in devices. As parts of California have sweltered, electricity demand has soared as well. Utilities are being stretched to the limit. In some instances, past it. Our booming 21st century economy is running on a power system that is antiquated and increasingly inadequate.

Nothing less than the reliability of our electric grid is at stake. Without electricity, business and industry grinds to a halt. Lights and air conditioners go out. For the sick, or the elderly, access to reliable electricity can be a matter of life and death.

California has already declared a record number of "stage 2 emergencies" this summer, meaning interruptions in electricity service for some businesses. And over the past several weeks, officials were on the brink of declaring a "stage 3 emergency," which sends blackouts rolling across the state to prevent a complete collapse of the power grid.

At an April electricity reliability summit in Sacramento, one of 11 I participated in across the country in recent months, the assembled officials and experts issued a warning. They declared that problems in California's power grid were imminent without action to help electricity supply catch up with electricity demand. The situation now is urgent, and the problems aren't going away.

The current crisis has roots in the revolutionary change sweeping the electric utility industry. And as it does in so many issues and in so many ways, California is leading the way on competition in the utility industry. I believe that, if structured properly, electricity competition and consumer choice will ultimately be good for consumers, good for the economy and good for the environment.

But the transition to competitive markets has, at times, been uncertain. Market players have postponed crucial decisions on new power plants and power lines. Gridlock is paralyzing interstate power and transmission markets. And this uncertainty is strangling innovations that would change forever -- and for the good -- the way we generate and use electricity.

It's not competition that is doing this -- it's the lack of a comprehensive federal law to ensure that competition works for everyone, in every state. California is not an island. The state's restructuring law is only half the battle. Congress needs to enact electricity legislation to permit interstate markets to flourish. What happens in Oregon or Arizona can have a tremendous impact on electricity consumers in California.

The situation here and elsewhere is an urgent wake-up call to Congress to pass comprehensive electricity restructuring legislation. The Clinton-Gore administration sent such a bill to Capitol Hill more than two years ago, but Congress has taken no action. If this bill were enacted, we would see new investments in power plants and transmission facilities, a more efficient transmission system, which would enable California to import more power from other states, and more funding for energy efficiency programs, which would reduce electricity demand.

The Energy Department has also been working to improve reliability, and this year launched several electricity-related initiatives:

We agreed with top utility executives on principles for helping ensure reliable electricity service;

We accelerated the release of government standards to get more efficient air conditioners into the marketplace more quickly (air conditioners consume about 20 percent of all electricity during peak time periods);

We conducted power outage emergency drills to better prepare for emergencies;

We identified barriers to distributed generation (such as small generators at homes and businesses) that need to be eliminated in order to ease strain on the grid; and

We encouraged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to simplify regulations that will promote greater reliability.

The federal government -- the country's biggest consumer of electricity -- is leading by example. And so just two weeks ago, President Clinton directed all federal agencies in California to reduce their consumption -- powering down elevators, escalators, and shutting off extraneous lighting -- while ensuring that employees' health and welfare remains observed. As the federal government uses 2 percent of all California's electricity, this should help ease the grid's burden.

The president also directly addressed the current rising price of power in California, ordering federal agencies in-state to provide assistance to low-income households and small businesses having trouble paying the rising price of electricity. Under the president's orders, I have also directed FERC to expedite its national investigation of bulk power markets -- to ensure that we have the information to keep American consumers protected.

Events of the past weeks are more evidence that we can delay no longer in finding ways to make our electricity system more reliable. It can be done if we work together -- Congress, federal, state and local governments, utilities, consumers. We have to work together. Because if we don't, we all may wind up sitting in the dark, alone.

http://cnniw.yellowbrix.com/pages/cnniw/Story.nsp?story_id=13234906&ID=cnniw&scategory=Utilities%3AElectricity

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), August 27, 2000


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