End to power sharing urged by Washington and Oregon

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End to power sharing urged Northwest leaders contend it's their states who pay for California's crisis.

Staff, news services

Washington and Oregon senators asked Energy Secretary-designate Spencer Abraham at his confirmation hearing Thursday to end the emergency order that sends cheap Bonneville Power Administration electricity to California at the expense of northwestern consumers.

“Frankly, I think my state is being set up — and I include Washington state — to be an energy farm for California,” said Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore. “Yesterday, I received three calls from different industries in Oregon complaining to me that they are just being put on notice that their rates will go up between 30 and 40 percent because of what’s happening in California.”

Smith’s office declined to name the industries that had complained. But the BPA has a pending rate case that could increase the price of wholesale power by June.

One rough BPA estimate said the increase could be in the 30 percent range.

If utilities passed along the cost, it likely would translate to about a 15 percent increase for electricity customers, said BPA spokesman Mike Hansen.

California’s energy crisis worsened Thursday, subjecting more people to rolling blackouts.

The lights went out in nearly 2 million homes and businesses for the second straight day.

The rolling outages began about 10 a.m. and stretched from the Bakersfield area of central California to the Oregon border, 500 miles away.

Power managers said they expected to have enough power to avoid more blackouts at nightfall, though more problems were possible today.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson extended his emergency order late Wednesday, requiring generators and federal power programs to sell electricity to California to prevent shortages until Tuesday — three days into the Bush administration. The original order was announced Dec. 14 and has been extended several times.

Abraham, who as a senator once proposed eliminating the Energy Department, said he will maintain the regional preference system that gives northwestern states first access to Bonneville’s cheap hydropower.

He also said he has changed his opinion and now opposes the sale of Bonneville and other federal power marketing administrations to the private sector.

The BPA said Thursday that it would spill more water over dams to cope with shrinking power supplies throughout the West.

Releasing more water out of the Grand Coulee Dam shouldn’t immediately harm endangered fish. But it could reduce the likelihood that reservoirs will be able to refill in time to provide the “targeted river flows” for fish in the spring and summer, BPA officials said.

The BPA, which oversees hydropower production on the Columbia River, began the week by being about 1,000 megawatts short of its contractual obligations to supply power.

“We tried to buy our way out and paid extremely high prices to secure power supplies. But we found the megawatts dwindling and prices skyrocketing,” said Steve Wright, BPA’s acting administrator.

The federal agency has spent $50 million in power purchase this week alone, BPA officials said.

Wright said the BPA’s shipments of electricity to California were not causing an energy shortage in the Northwest. The BPA exchanges electricity with California. For every megawatt sent South, two megawatts are returned during off-peak hours.

With no end to the crisis in sight, Californians began stocking up on flashlights, candles and firewood. Stores were swamped with calls from businesses looking for generators

http://news.statesmanjournal.com/single_article.cfm?i=18726

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 21, 2001


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