Arizona Power Plants Stockpiling Oil for Summer

Arizona's three largest utilities are stockpiling oil to potentially burn at nine power plants to help meet the summer's electricity demand.

The diesel oil would serve as a backup to natural gas at the nine seldom-run plants - four in metropolitan Phoenix, three in Tucson, one located in between and another near Yuma. Burning oil instead of natural gas produces even higher concentrations of pollutants.

The utilities said the older plants will be run to generate power for the Phoenix area. Still, there is an incentive to run them to produce power to sell to energy-hungry California. Rick Moore of the Grand Canyon Trust says greater assurances are needed that the older units are used only to generate electricity for Arizona.

http://www.12news.com/12_News/printstory.html?StoryID=5206

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 07, 2001

Answers

I live in downtown Phoenix. This area has exploded with growth for the last 20 years. The town of Gilbert in the SE Valley has gone from around 10,000 people a decade ago to over 100,000 people now. Salt River Project, the utility that serves that area needs to expand its power plant in the area to meet the demands. They are running into severe opposition, a real bad case of NIMBY. Fine, then in my book, Gilbert would be the first to suffer from any imposed balckouts this summer. You don't want to take care of your own needs, don't look at me to bail you out!

-- Rob McCarthy (celtic64@mindspring.com), May 07, 2001.