Slim Relief in Sight for Strained Western Power Grid

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Slim Relief in Sight for Strained Western Power Grid By James Jelter Dec 12 6:58pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Power officials in the Western United States pointed on Tuesday to signs the region's current electricity crisis may be easing, but held out little hope of a lasting fix for the troubled grid.

``Today will be much like yesterday,'' said Kellan Fluckinger, chief operating officer at the California Independent System Operator (ISO), the agency that manages about 75 percent of the state's transmission system.

This is the ninth consecutive day Californians have been put on a power alert, producing a stream of pleas on radio and television to cut back on energy use to avoid crashing the grid, which has not kept pace with the state's booming economy.

Certain big industrial customers in California will likely have their power briefly cut again this evening to help the state get through the peak demand hours, Fluckinger said.

Some 8,500 megawatts (MW), or roughly a fourth of California's power generation, was still out of service Tuesday for maintenance and repairs after running hard all summer to keep pace with heavy air conditioning demand.

A megawatt is roughly enough to power 1,000 homes.

But Fluckinger said he expected the number of plants out of service to drop steadily through the week, putting more megawatts on the grid as schools, offices and factories start throttling back for the holiday season, further easing demand.

Relief was also seen coming from the Pacific Northwest as the region began to thaw out after a cold snap that kept power generators scrambling to serve local communities, leaving little electricity for export to California.

NORTHWEST LIFTS POWER ALERT

The power alert declared Friday by the governors of Washington, Oregon and Montana was lifted on Tuesday.

But the usual interstate transfer of electricity on the Western power grid remains severely hampered by a shortage of hydroelectric supplies.

``We've had one of the driest Novembers on record and December is shaping up to be about the same,'' said Mike Hansen, a spokesman for the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), the federal agency that markets power from giant dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

``We are over the immediate crisis, but just waiting for the next one...we briefly pushed the hydropower system beyond what was planned,'' he said.

Tapping reservoirs now raises the risk of depleting hydroelectric supplies next summer and leaving the rivers dangerously low for the annual salmon migration.

California depends on hydropower from in-state plants and imports power for 20-25 percent of its power needs.

Fluckinger warned that despite successfully staving off widespread outages this past week, the Western power system is still in terrible shape, with demand from the region's growing population and strong economy overwhelming available supplies.

``We're looking at a lack of supply after 10 years of robust growth. We have a huge need to site power plants and transmission lines,'' he said.

In response to the crisis, more than 6,000 MW of new generation, mostly to be fired by natural gas, are now on the drawing boards or under construction just in California.

Despite efforts to rush new units to completion, most will not be on line until 2002, setting the region up for what most industry analysts predict will be a long, hot summer of chronic power shortages and, most likely, blackouts on days when peak demand outstrips supply.

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/headlines/general/20001212/259994.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), December 12, 2000


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