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One More Cold Snap Could Spell Real Trouble by Bill Virgin Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 20, 2001

So far, Northwest has been warm -- and lucky

The Pacific Northwest has gotten off relatively easy this winter, the head of the Bonneville Power Administration says, with no prolonged cold snaps and severe storms that drive up electricity demand and tax the reliability of the grid with downed lines and outages.

But unless the region's luck with weather continues, "we'll run up against reliability problems in the next month," said Steve Wright, BPA's acting administrator, at an energy conference in Bellevue this past week.

If a storm or cold snap were to hit the Northwest, it would further complicate an already complex situation in which the region's utilities are dealing with thin margins of reserve power and skyrocketing prices for short-term electricity.

While Californians got a respite yesterday from two days of rolling two-hour blackouts, utility officials in the Northwest mulled what kind of fix they and their customers might be in should the weather turn bad.

A severe cold snap could send power demand soaring and force utilities to spend millions more on electricity to make up the difference. Nasty storms also hold the potential for downing transmission lines just when demand is at a peak, which overloads on the rest of the system and threatens outages.

"I am looking forward to mid-February with prayerful reflection," said Seattle City Light spokesman Bob Royer.

The Puget Sound region thought it might be slugged with an Arctic blast storm in mid-December, and warnings were issued for businesses and consumers to conserve power. As it turned out, the cold air wasn't as frigid as expected and "we did not reach any kind of record peak," said Dorothy Bracken, spokeswoman for Puget Sound Energy.

A sustained cold period, such as four days of temperatures dipping to the single digits, would add $25 million to $32 million to City Light's costs, Royer said.

But the absence of storms and the precipitation they bring contributes to the West Coast's current predicament. Lower than normal rainfall and snowpacks mean many reservoirs are below normal levels and there's less surplus available.

If a major cold snap should hit, one way to cope would be to take demand off the system. Royer said City Light has talked to its largest customers about reducing power consumption in the event of a storm to relieve strain on the system.

The winter peaking season runs from mid-November to mid-February, but even if the region gets out of that period without mishap it still faces the problem of low spring runoff in the Columbia River system, said Bill Gaines, Puget Sound Energy's vice president of energy supply. Forecasts now say runoff will be 68 percent of normal, and that's presuming precipitation is normal from now on.

Low runoff means utilities would have to go buy expensive spot-market power to make up the shortfall in the hydroelectric system, and could set up battles between using water for power generation and for salmon migration.

Gaines noted that last year the spring runoff was close to normal "and look at the troubles we had." A spike in demand from California and the Southwest and outages at some generating plants drove up prices.

In other developments yesterday in the California power crisis:

• In a stopgap rescue effort, California Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill yesterday that frees $400 million for the state to buy power on the open market and sell it to utilities.

• The state's energy crisis is beginning to ripple its way through the California economy. The West Coast's largest steel plant temporarily halted production, idling 1,000 workers in Fontana. Miller Brewing halted production at its Irwindale facility. An aerospace industry supplier in Santa Ana shut down. So did several food plants in the Central Valley city of Visalia.

  The state's main gasoline pipeline is running only part of the day, threatening supplies to airports and service stations and prompting warnings that prices will start to climb.

• Credit rating agency Standard and Poor's decided to put California's voter-approved general obligation bonds that finance everything from schools to parks to highways -- on a credit watch with "negative implications." That could mean higher interest rates.

• Two California utilities teetering on bankruptcy warned that they might cut service beginning today. One also told state officials it would use only the power it produces itself beginning today -- not nearly enough power for the 14 million people it serves.

  State utility regulators responded with a temporary injunction, guaranteeing the utilities "will not and may not abandon service to customers."

• Federal Energy Secretary Bill Richardson issued an order requiring companies to continue shipping natural gas to California until Tuesday night. The action was taken to ensure that utilities will not be cut off by natural gas suppliers.

• One of the two troubled California utilities filed what it called a "worst-case scenario" to explain what would happen if the utility is cut off by power suppliers. The plan says hospitals, fire stations and other emergency services would experience blackouts of up to three hours long, twice a day. Other areas would see blackouts of up to six hours, twice a day.

• The head of Energy Northwest, formerly known as the Washington Public Power Supply System, floated the idea this week that an abandoned nuclear power plant construction project at Hanford could be completed. But a spokesman later said the chances of doing so are remote, requiring both capital and public approval.
  (more at plant1.htm)