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Lights could be off 12 hours a day, utility warns Filed: 01/19/2001

By KAREN GAUDETTE

Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A cash-strapped California utility warns as many as 2.6 million customers could face up to 12 hours a day without electricity unless the state's efforts to buy power on its behalf sufficiently boosts the lagging supply.

The worst-case scenario plan, which Pacific Gas and Electric Co. filed with the state's Public Utilities Commission, also would plunge hospitals and police into darkness for up to six hours a day.

Those outages could occur without notice, according to the plan filed Jan. 9 with the PUC, even to emergency centers and people with critical electricity needs.

"We hope that we never have to use this and that generators will continue to sell into California," said PG&E spokesman Ron Low.

PG&E's bad credit rating has left it unable to borrow money to buy power to serve its customers, and left it dependent on the state for financial help. PG&E can produce some power from its own plants, but only enough to service 30 percent to 50 percent of its customers, Low said.

The utility's worst-case scenario states that all its non-emergency residential and business customers "would be interrupted twice a day for six hours, 12 hours total, every day that PG&E is unable to procure electricity from the wholesale market."

Emergency customers — hospitals, police and fire departments — "would also be interrupted twice a day for three hours, six hours total."

Southern California Edison Co., another major California utility near bankruptcy, has not yet released such a plan, said spokesman Paul Klein.

Word of potentially longer blackouts frustrated hospital officials, who are negotiating with PG&E through the PUC to make all hospitals exempt from rolling blackouts. Hospitals with more than 100 beds have been spared so far.

Hospitals are required by state law to have backup generators and emergency plans to deal with earthquakes, power outages and other crises, said Ron Smith, regional vice president for the California Hospital Council.

But surgeries may be postponed if blackouts persist, Smith said, because hospitals are not allowed to perform them unless they have backup power. Those running on generators during an outage would not.

"How would you like to have them be operating on you with a generator and the generator goes out? It's a very serious problem," Smith said. "The hospitals will never allow an unsafe situation to exist, so if you have to have an emergency operation they will move you to a place that can have it."

In a letter to Gov. Gray Davis on Thursday, the hospital council requested an executive order to ensure health care services remain accessible in case of blackouts. Two San Francisco hospitals and one each in Watsonville and Fresno were blacked out during Thursday's outages, but service has returned to normal, Smith said.

The letter asked that Davis:

— Order all hospitals exempt from rolling blackouts.

— Allow hospitals to avoid interruptible service contracts, which let utilities temporarily shut off power during crunch times in exchange for lower rates for those customers. PUC rules now prevent hospitals from opting out of those contracts.

—Remove hospitals from the "large commercial" business category to avoid higher rate increases.

Davis did not immediately respond to calls for comment.

Other emergency services said they expected service would remain normal regardless of further outages.

Anne Colinco at the California Highway Patrol's Golden Gate Communications Center in Vallejo said that a generator will allow them to continue to take cellular 911 calls from nine Bay area counties through any blackouts.

http://www.bakersfield.com/oil/Story/278047p-259438c.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 19, 2001