Just how much power generation does San Diego County need to bring online if it hopes to escape rolling blackouts this summer? Is there any chance of avoiding blackouts altogether? The answers are just as complicated as the current state of California’s failed deregulated electricity market.
If we take a look at our state’s power grid and the agency that controls it, we shed some welcome light on the basics of power emergencies, and we uncover a few ways to minimize the threat of blackouts this summer.
The Independent System Operator (ISO), which operates the grid, is the voice that orders curtailments during the hot weather months. However, it’s the strange structure of California’s grid that has everything to do with if and when our region goes dark.
As we learned all too well over the winter, when the state’s power reserves fell below 7 percent, the ISO orders one of three increasingly serious emergency stages. Interestingly, these stages are declared not regionally, but statewide. In the words of an ISO spokesperson, “San Diego County is not an island and cannot be separated out from the rest of the state. If your neighbor’s house is on fire, you’re going to help put it out,” said the spokesperson, “and if a region is short, all regions must share in the burden.”
To continue on with the ISO’s metaphor, my question is, what if the hose just won’t reach?
This was the case Jan. 17, when a Stage 3 power emergency was declared and, by ISO guidelines, went into effect for the entire state. San Diego County homes, businesses, schools and institutions including all county-owned facilities were asked to scale back electricity use.
Businesses terminated shifts and sent employees home to alleviate strain on the grid while the county extinguished all unnecessary lighting and installed back-up generators at several facilities. A school district actually held classes outdoors under the assumption that it was contributing electricity to the power-starved grid.
Several weeks later, I learned these massive conservation measures were in vain. KGTV Channel 10 news reporter Mark Matthews obtained the production logs from one of our region’s largest privately owned power generating units. The logs revealed that one of the plant’s generating units was placed on idle during the Stage 3 emergency.
The company did not purposefully withhold power from the grid. Rather, the state’s transmission system simply was not capable of transporting the plant’s available power to Northern California where electrical supplies were dangerously low.
In reality, there was never a shortage of energy in the San Diego region Jan. 17. In fact, on that day, the San Diego region had power to spare. The problem was a transmission system bottleneck called “Path 15” which limits the amount of power that can be transported from Southern California to Northern California.
The dirty little secret of the state’s power grid is that it unfairly penalizes some regions for the electricity shortfalls of others. I am determined to see that the lights don’t go out in San Diego simply because there are power shortages in Northern California. Our region plays far too pivotal a role in the state’s economy to “share” in artificial emergency stages, especially if there is a surplus of power in our own back yard.
Recently, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to join me to shield our county from shortfalls in the north and demand that the ISO implement regional, not statewide, power emergencies. It is my belief that rolling blackouts are more manageable, predictable and, above all, fair, if they are implemented regionally.
Jacob represents the 2nd District on the county Board of Supervisors.
