California may sap West's electricity

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California may sap West's electricity

No real danger now, but future looks dicier By David Wichner ARIZONA DAILY STAR

They say it can't happen here: the budget-busting electric bills and rolling blackouts suffered by utility customers in an underpowered California.

But Arizona government and power-industry officials say California's problems may have some indirect and long-term consequences for Arizona and other states that share the same Western power grid.

If California does not get its act together, officials warn, the energy-starved state's quest for power could pinch future supplies across the 11-state grid.

"We're not in immediate danger at all of losing our power or anything like that," said Francie Noyes, spokeswoman for Gov. Jane Hull.

"But the Western power system is a grid that affects the whole region."

Hull, who was traveling and unavailable for comment yesterday, has joined other Western governors in urging California to work cooperatively to fix its power problems before they spread across the West.

"California is not an electrical island. This is a problem that pervades the entire Western wholesale market, and it cannot be solved without a coordinated regional plan," Hull and the governors of Montana, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming wrote in a letter to California Gov. Gray Davis last week.

Hull, in her recent State of the State Address, vowed not to allow power needed by Arizona ratepayers to be sold to bail California out of its current crisis.

The U.S. Department of Energy already has ordered utilities in Arizona and elsewhere to sell surplus power to California, despite the near-bankrupt status of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison Co.

Noyes said the governor would fight any effort by the feds to require Arizona to sell power needed by its residents, adding it appears doubtful at this point that the Bush administration will do so.

Ultimately, the long-term solution is for California to catch up on building its own, in-state power plants, the governor and regulators say.

Arizona officials say the state has plenty of power and is keeping up with its generating needs, with 13 new plants planned or under construction.

Tucson Electric Power Co. spokesman Steve Lynn said the utility has the generating capacity to meet its customers' ongoing needs. A new 75-megawatt power plant at West Grant Road and Interstate 10 is expected to come online soon to help meet TEP's future needs.

But more plants are needed throughout the West, and California may drain off excess capacity needed for required power reserves, said Jerry Smith, electrical engineer with the utilities division of the Arizona Corporation Commission.

"What they do will affect the West as a whole," Smith said.

He noted that reserve power capacity across the Western region has fallen from 15 to 20 percent traditionally to about 10 percent now.

State utility regulators say a power-hungry California could disrupt careful power-generation plans in Arizona and other states.

"The concern is that California poaches on the available energy supply in other Western states," Arizona Corporation Commissioner Marc Spitzer said.

"We don't want to be a farm team for California," Spitzer said, citing concerns over pollution and water use by new power plants.

Commissioner Jim Irvin said that while Arizona seems to have sufficient generating capacity planned to meet future demand, there's no guarantee every plant will be built or will sell only in Arizona.

"We are in the same boat as California to some degree, in that our population is growing and our power plants aren't keeping up," Irvin said.

Corporation Commission Chairman Bill Mundell said he's concerned that Arizona might be forced to operate its plants beyond their limits.

"We can't have our power plants running nonstop, 24 hours a day, because they have to be shut down for maintenance to get ready for summer," Mundell said.

As California struggles, there are more immediate concerns as well.

Smith and other state officials say a major outage in California could take large portions of the Western power grid with it.

"It's all interconnected," he said, citing a major outage in 1996 caused when transmission lines in Oregon failed when they became tangled in untrimmed trees.

Even the act of shutting down parts of the California system in the rolling blackouts that occurred in the past week could be perilous to the entire power grid, said Lindy Funkhouser, director of Arizona's Residential Utility Consumer Office.

"If someone makes a mistake then, yes, we could have some risk to our system," said Funkhouser, whose agency advocates on behalf of consumers before the Corporation Commission.

While Arizona can throw some switches and isolate itself to some degree from a major outage elsewhere on the grid, Funkhouser added, "We can't be completely insulated from it."

In their letter to California Gov. Davis, Hull and the other Western governors urged that California adopt tough conservation measures and commit to building more power plants and transmission facilities.

The governors also urged the formation of an interstate working group to develop a regional power plan.

Hull will discuss the power problems at a special meeting of the Western Governors Association in Portland Feb. 2, Noyes said.

http://www.azstarnet.com/star/today/10120powerwoes.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 20, 2001


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