Rescue California

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Power supply: The heat is on
State energy officials don't fear another crisis. But they do face a balancing act for the summer ahead

June 03, 2003

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Ackerman, executive director of the Western Power Trading Forum.

``California cannot make it through the summer without importing power,'' Ackerman said.

A sustained heat wave across the Western United States could force other states to withhold their excess power, meaning less might be available for California -- just as millions of residents are flicking on their air conditioners.

Forest fires

What is more, Detmers said, forest fires fueled by high temperatures could damage the high-transmission power lines that carry in power from the Northwest.

``If we see a West-wide heat wave, we could be back to that situation'' of having to issue power alerts, Detmers said.

Last July, a heat wave simultaneously drove temperatures over 100 degrees in several Western states, and the state unexpectedly lost 3,000 megawatts of power because of plant outages. Officials were forced to call two Stage 2 alerts, meaning power reserves had dipped to less than 5 percent of demand. The state never went to Stage 3, and there were no blackouts.

A power emergency such as that would test consumers' power conservation habits.

State energy officials predict that consumers would voluntarily reduce demand by about 1,300 megawatts if asked to do so during a power alert. That's about a third as much as Californians conserved during peak periods of the energy crisis.

``It was a very visible and real emergency for people during the energy crisis,'' said Susanne Garfield of the California Energy Commission. ``I think people just sort of fell off and backed away from conserving.''

But when confronted with an emergency and direct appeals from utilities, said Smith of PG&E, the public will help the state pull through.

``We're not expecting it, but if we have several days of excessive heat, we'll be out there encouraging people to conserve,'' Smith said. ``We believe that will do the trick.''

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact Michael Bazeley at mbazeley@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5642.

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