the film forum library tutorial contact

Northwest Blackout Strategy in Place by Michelle Cole, Oregonian staff The Oregonian, January 21, 2001

Utilities say power would be cut no more than 30 minutes in any location
downtown Portland and Salem would be spared

Computers shut down. Traffic snarls. People get stuck in elevators.

Should rolling blackouts occur in the Northwest, they would be much like those experienced by about 675,000 California homes and businesses last week.

Utility companies serving Oregon say power to homes, businesses and schools would be cut for no more than 30 minutes at a time, in a changing patchwork of neighborhoods and city blocks. But the blackouts would likely occur during the hours of peak electricity demand -- between 6:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. and between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Hospitals, police and fire stations would be spared. So would 9-1-1 centers, MAX light rail service, television and radio broadcast centers and large sewer and water treatment plants. Power would be maintained in the core areas of downtown Portland and Salem and at the Portland International Airport. But certain basic infrastructure elements, such as traffic lights, would go out within blackout areas.

Rolling blackouts would be more of an inconvenience than a calamity, Northwest power managers say.

"First one block would go down and then another. People would take turns. . . . If things got under control after the first half hour, we'd stop. If not, it would continue through a 12-hour cycle, so no customer would be affected more than twice," said Mark Fryberg, spokesman for Portland General Electric, which serves more Oregonians than any other utility.

Despite events in California on Wednesday and Thursday, spokesmen for Oregon utilities stressed that there was no imminent threat of rolling blackouts here.

That could change, however, with a long, dry cold spell. Or if a power-generating plant went off-line.

"We are literally poised on the knife edge," said Dick Watson, director of the power division for the Northwest Power Planning Council in Portland.

Power managers in California last week scrambled to buy enough juice to meet demand -- often with just 10 minutes to spare. When they failed, they ordered utilities to cut their loads through rolling blackouts, with some areas being hit as long as two hours.

In the Northwest, power managers say they can exercise several options before resorting to power cuts.

"We can do things California can't do, which is to run the hydro system hard," said Mike Hansen, a spokesman for the Bonneville Power Administration, which markets power generated by 29 federal dams in the vast Columbia-Snake River basin.

After declaring a power emergency Thursday, the BPA released more water from federal dams than normally allowed under Endangered Species Act protections for salmon.

Such a move puts the federal agency in the awkward position of choosing between people or fish, BPA spokesman Ed Mosey said. "If you withdraw too much water from the reservoirs, the probability is that you won't have it to move juvenile salmon down (the river) this spring," he said.

The difficult choices brought on by the West's energy crisis began emerging five years ago, as the region's population grew but an uncertain regulatory climate discouraged the development of new generation plants.

Normally, California would send power it did not need in the winter to the Northwest, and the Northwest would send power south to meet California's demand during the summer. But last year, Northwest power managers and government agencies realized this winter would be anything but normal.

Emergency plan devised In the fall of 2000, a regional Emergency Response Team was formed and a Pacific Northwest "Energy Emergency Plan" written. The team -- comprising representatives from utility companies and state agencies from Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana -- had expected to test the emergency plan with a drill. But there was no time.

On Dec. 8, with cold temperatures in the forecast, the team issued its first warning of potential power shortfalls. The warning was lifted four days later, when frigid temperatures never materialized.

The team continues to stay in touch via conference call and is poised to issue another warning if the situation merits, said Don Badley, system operations manager for the Northwest Power Pool and a member of the Emergency Response Team.

In Oregon, state law gives Gov. John Kitzhaber the authority to declare a power emergency and to call for rolling blackouts. In practice, the authority to order blackouts is exercised by utility companies in coordination with Jack Bernhardsen, the Pacific Northwest Security Coordinator.

Operating from a small office inside BPA's Vancouver, Wash., complex, Bernhardsen and his staff of five keep 24-hour-watch over the electricity grid serving seven Western states and two Canadian provinces.

Should any portion of the region reach the brink of not meeting its power demands, Bernhardsen is the first to know. In emergency situations, he has the authority to order utilities to reduce their loads to protect the system from collapsing.

Think of the interconnected grid as one of the nets stretched beneath acrobats, Bernhardsen said. "If you were sitting on it with somebody else and he gets off, you might be thrown off, too."

Utilities would decide details The utility company decides how and where to cut power. PGE's plan outlining its emergency load reduction procedures dates to the early 1980s, but the utility has never been forced to rolling blackouts.

The last time Northwest power managers worried about supply falling short of demand was in February 1989, when reservoirs were low and a bitter cold arctic storm blew through.

"We managed to keep the system up, but there were a lot of people who did go down because of problems with snow and ice," said Watson of the Northwest Power Planning Council. The unplanned cuts caused by natural events reduced the load enough to eliminate any need to order rolling blackouts.

Spokesmen for both PGE and PacifiCorp, a Portland-based utility with 1.5 million customers in six Western states, say rolling blackouts would occur this winter only after the utilities captured all the power available. Their options include cutting power to heavy-use industrial customers with whom they have interruptible power agreements and arranging with certain customers to buy back power that would not be used because of curtailed or shuttered operations.

Even though they say rolling blackouts are a dim possibility, utility companies advise consumers to be prepared to be without power at any time. They suggest customers keep on hand flashlights, warm clothes and blankets, enough groceries to last a couple of days, a manual can opener and a telephone that works without being plugged into an electrical outlet.

"A car could hit a pole in your neighborhood at any time and power could be out for several hours," said PGE's Fryberg. "It's a fact of life."