Generation gap: Northwest electricity no longer plentiful

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Generation gap: Northwest electricity no longer plentiful

JOHN K. WILEY, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SPOKANE -- Known for its abundant cheap electricity, the Pacific Northwest is waking up to short supplies and high prices and asking: How did this happen?

The answers are varied and complex but boil down to too many people and too few generating plants.

The region this week narrowly avoided rolling blackouts, but experts say it's only a matter of time.

"The people in Washington state might have to get used to this, too," Dana Middleton, a spokeswoman for Gov. Gary Locke, warned after he asked residents to voluntarily reduce power usage and ordered state workers to cut back their energy consumption.

"The fundamental structural problem with the energy system in the West is we are short on generation," Craig Gannett, an energy lawyer with the Seattle law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, said Thursday. "If we had another 5,000 megawatts in the West, most of these other problems would go away."

The shortages are caused by several factors, including low reservoirs in the Northwest after a dry fall, California's deregulation of the electricity industry, below-normal cold temperatures, demands of high-voltage Internet companies, the shutdown of some power plants for maintenance and a lack of new power plants.

The Northwest's problem lies in its success in the past two decades.

Thousands of new residents attracted to the region, and the technology companies where they land jobs, are increasing the demand for electricity.

Between 1995 and 1999, peak loads in the West increased by nearly 12,000 megawatts, about 10 percent, while generating capacity increased by only 4,600 megawatts, according to the Western States Coordinating System, a regional power distribution group.

Now there's little cushion to absorb spikes in demand, as happened in July when the West cooked during a heat wave, and this week, when temperatures dropped to single digits or, in some places, colder.

The high demand and strained supplies mean wholesale electrical power that sold last year for $22 to $45 per megawatt fetched as much as $5,000 on the spot market this week.

And there's no short-term help. Additional generation capacity isn't expected to be available until 2002 or later.

"The Northwest Power Planning Council anticipated some of these problems a year ago with a study saying the Northwest is getting perilously low in reserves," council member Tom Karier said. "At the time, there was intellectual agreement with what we were saying. Now, that's becoming acknowledgment there is a problem."

The council's study indicated there is a need for at least 3,000 megawatts of new generating capacity, or its equivalent in conservation, Karier said.

"I think the building of new generating plants has begun, but there's a lag period," energy lawyer Gannett said. "They won't be available for at least two years, and during that two years we're in jeopardy."

Most of the new generating plants under construction, or planned, will be fired by natural gas. That also has some drawbacks.

"There doesn't seem to be any excess of natural gas, either," Karier said. "The price of that fuel is going up increasingly as well."

Natural gas sold at record levels this week.

The situation is complicated by California, the largest market in the West, which normally uses less electricity in the winter months. The Northwest is a winter-peaking market and traditionally ships its surplus electricity to California in the summer. California normally would be shipping its power north in winter.

But after this summer's heat wave, much of the Golden State's generation was taken down for repairs. Little, if any, extra power is available for export.

Cold weather and off-line generation forced California to enact emergency conservation measures.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson ordered Northwest generators to sell electricity to power-strapped California utilities to avert the immediate threat of rolling blackouts.

http://news.theolympian.com/stories/20001216/HomePageStories/161979.shtml

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), December 16, 2000

Answers

Sorry to say, they do not have a "belief". For sure, the "damn thing" may shut down, fer a while, will not last for-ever. Though some. may think so.

-- Tired and I wanna (go@home.com.), December 17, 2000.

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