Possible blackouts pushed back to 10 a.m.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- California's energy crisis grew increasingly dire Tuesday, with Northern Californians bracing for another round of rolling blackouts as the state's power managers desperately scrounged the market for electricity.

Possible blackouts, originally predicted as early as 7 a.m., were pushed back to 10 a.m. early Tuesday as power managers bought sufficient electricity from Canada to keep going through the morning rush hour.

``There is still a strong likelihood of outages,'' Stephanie McCorkle, spokeswoman for the California Independent System Operator, said early Tuesday.

The ISO continued its Stage 3 alert -- meaning it was running the power grid on less than 1.5 percent reserves -- for the eighth straight day early Tuesday.

California lost the ability to save as much as 300 megawatts of power -- enough to illuminate 300,000 homes -- on Monday night when one of the state's two largest utilities exhausted its legal right to curtail any more electricity this year to its so-called interruptible customers.

If that wasn't enough of a blow, hydroelectric plants near Fresno were running low on water to power generators, transmission problems were disrupting the flow of electricity from Oregon and power managers were finding less electricity available on the open market than they had anticipated.

It also wasn't clear whether President Bush's new energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, would continue the emergency orders his predecessor put into effect last month. The orders, requiring out-of-state suppliers to continue selling electricity and natural gas to California's cash-strapped utilities, are scheduled to expire at midnight.

``Governor Davis talked to Energy Secretary Abraham last night for about a half hour and formally requested that both of these be extended,'' the governor's spokesman, Steve Maviglio, said Monday.

Meanwhile, lawmakers continued to try to put together a long-term solution to the crisis that darkened hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across California for hours at a time last week.

One scenario under discussion called for the state's two largest utilities -- Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric -- to hand their hydroelectric plants over to the state, which would begin buying additional power on the spot market and through long-term contracts.

Another plan would put the state in the electricity business for up to five years, buying power at low rates and selling it directly to consumers. That proposal, already approved by the Assembly, must be passed by the state Senate and signed by the governor.

Davis, who is reviewing both measures, is leaning toward the hydroelectric plan, Maviglio said.

Assemblyman Fred Keeley, who proposed the five-year deal, said it would buy time for the state's two largest utilities to restore their credit while lawmakers work on long-term solutions to botched deregulation laws adopted in 1996.

Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison say the laws, which prevent them from raising rates in the face of spiraling increases in the wholesale cost of energy, have put them more than $10 billion in debt.

The Legislature and governor allocated $400 million last week to buy power because the utilities, whose credit ratings have been downgraded to junk bond status, can no longer find wholesalers willing to sell to them on credit. As of Monday, officials said they had spent $113.2 million of that money.

Consumer groups are balking at spending any more. On Monday, Davis' office received 5,000 petition signatures from people rejecting what they called a multibillion-dollar utility bailout.

``We see the cancer spreading, if you will,'' said Graham Brownstein of The Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco-based group.

Power officials, meanwhile, said a huge conservation effort is needed.

If 10 million customers each turned off just one 100-watt light bulb in their homes, that would save 1,000 megawatts of electricity, Fluckiger said.

``I'm not suggesting that everyone have candlelight dinners from now on, but one light can impact it substantially,'' he said. ``Everyone needs to take this seriously and not assume someone else is going to do it.''

Three hundred megawatts of Tuesday's expected shortfall were lost when PG&E exhausted the 100 hours a year it can shut off power to approximately 170 large customers.

Those customers had agreed to have service curtailed during an emergency in exchange for steeply discounted rates. Some of them lost power as much as 18 hours a day during the height of the crisis last week, when rolling blackouts were imposed in Northern California, and by Monday night the yearly 100-hour limit had been reached.

``The program has been used up and we're gonna need to ask all our customers to step up their conservation efforts,'' said PG&E spokesman Ron Low. ``Conservation is more important now than ever.''

But some consumers said they were already doing all they could.

Mathew Talala, who owns the popular Village Pub in Palm Springs, says he spends about $6,000 a month on electricity and needs all he uses.

``I start turning signage off and decorative lights, the place looks less appealing. I lose business,'' he said.

He predicted that if rolling blackouts persist much longer businesses and cities will begin to take matters into their own hands.

``If I have to get my own generator ... I would do that,'' he said. ``You will start to see 10 businesses getting together and buying their own big generators, cities getting involved.''

http://www.bayarea.com/c/breaking/docs/021357.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 23, 2001