California faces
power shortages

John W. Schoen Senior Producer • Profile • E-mail

California and federal energy officials repeated warnings Thursday that the electricity system in southern California will be put to the test this summer, especially with long range forecasts calling for hotter-than-normal temperatures. And next summer may be even rougher, they say.

While most of the rest of the country should have adequate supplies, ongoing transmission bottlenecks continue to leave some regions of the U.S. vulnerable to blackouts or sharp rate increases. But the southern half of the California “is the worst electricity supply situation in the entire country,” Joseph Kelliher, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, told an electricity conference in San Francisco.

FERC Chairman Pat Wood, reflecting on the chaotic blackout days of the California energy crisis in 2000-2001, said: “I thought we would be further along after four years ... It’s a bit disheartening looking again at a potentially tight summer, maybe two.”

Though power supplies should be adequate in the nothern half of the state, a transmission bottlneck that cuts the state in half has left southern California vulnerable. That transmission congestion is costing consumers an estimated $1 billion a year.

Nationwide, demand for electricity is expected to rise by nearly 6 percent this summer, with generating capacity up 7.4 percent, according to the North American Reliability Council, an industry group. So, for most parts of the country, generating capacity is expected to meet demand -– even on the hottest days of summer.

But the availability of electrical power –- and the price you pay for it -- depends heavily on where you live. Despite strong investment in new generating capacity in the past few years, the nation’s power grid is still a patchwork of smaller markets based on regional power lines that were never designed to move electricity coast-to-cast. 

“On average, the country has done rather well in terms of building generation capacity,” said Bryan Lee, a FERC spokesman. “The problem is that you need transmissions lines to get that capacity often where its needed.”

Forecasting peak demand during the summer months -– especially on the hottest afternoons when commercial and residential air conditioners kick in all at once -– depends most heavily on predicting the duration and timing of the hottest heat spell in August. And this summer is shaping up as a hot one. Long-range weather forecasters at the National Weather Service think this summer will be hotter than normal in much of the Southeast, Southwest, Texas, California and Alaska – and cooler than normal in the northern plains states.

But federal officials are already warning of higher prices and possible blackouts -- energy officials prefer to call them “controlled outages” -- in some parts of the country.

Energy officials are closely watching the Pacific Northwest, where hydropower supplies more than 60 percent of the region’s electricity. Much drier-than-normal winter weather has left some of the region’s mountain ranges with snow packs of less than half their normal levels. Power officials say they don’t expect the lights to go out this summer. But a drop in hydropower supplies could force utilities to turn to higher-priced power sources. That could mean higher electric rates for a region accustomed to a relatively cheap source of power.

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