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Follow UsSAN FRANCISCO: California's power crisis took a sharp turn for the worse on
Monday as an unexpected electricity crunch forced officials to temporarily cut
power to an estimated one million customers across the length and breadth of the
state.
From the restaurants of Beverly Hills to the high-tech manufacturing plants
of Silicon Valley, lights flickered off, machines ground to a stop and air
conditioning cut out, as officials scrambled to save the state's massive power
grid from total meltdown.
The sudden resumption of rolling blackouts served as a vivid reminder to
Californians that the power crisis created by rocketing wholesale energy prices
and their state's bungled power deregulation effort was far from over.
Officials, however, blamed the power cuts on a spate of unseasonably warm
weather and the loss of several key power-generating plants. "It's like a
sauna," San Francisco International Airport spokesman Ron Wilson said, even
as officials turned air conditioning off in the massive terminals, part of
last-ditch conservation efforts which went into effect around the state Monday.
The fresh wave of outages, called on the last day of winter, raised new
concerns about how the nation's richest and most populous state can get through
the long, hot summer without economically crippling disruptions.
Fire knocks out two generators
The California Independent System Operator (ISO) ordered rolling blackouts
at 11:46 a.m. (2:46 p.m. EST, 1946 GMT) in a last-minute bid to ease strain on
the transmission grid and avoid a widespread, uncontrolled outage. A transformer
fire at a big Southern California power plant knocked two generators off line,
pushing electricity supplies to dangerously low levels.
But grid operators said the problem had been building all morning, with an
early hot spell boosting air conditioning demand in the Southwest and a drought
in the Northwest drying up the flow of hydro-electric power on which California
typically depends for emergency relief.
This was the first time rolling blackouts have struck Southern California,
though Northern California endured two consecutive days of outages back on Jan.
17 and Jan. 18. Rolling blackouts typically last 60 to 90 minutes at a time
before utilities switch the light back on and "roll" the outages to
the next circuit on the grid as long as needed to restore a balance between
supply and demand on the grid.
ISO officials have warned that things will only grow worse as California
struggles to keep pace with soaring demand during the summer months, when air
conditioning drives energy use to its annual peak.
No quick fix to problem
In Washington, President George W. Bush sounded an ominous warning by stating
that he saw no quick fix to what has become a national power problem, and Energy
Secretary Spencer Abraham repeated his prediction that more blackouts were
"inevitable" for California. Monday was the third time since January,
that blackouts were ordered in California and the first time that Southern
California was included in the order.
The power cuts have also affected some of the Silicon giants, namely computer
maker Sun Microsystems Inc. that said that the blackouts had forced it to shut
operations for two hours at a manufacturing plant in Newark. Diane Carlini, a
spokeswoman for the firm, said because of security concerns the firm sent home a
number of workers at the plant in Newark, which also houses several different
business and manufacturing units.
"The standard procedure when the power goes out is to leave the
building," Carlini said. "During the outage basically the facility was
not operating." Carlini added a sales and engineering facility in San Diego
where the firm develops higher end servers also lost power during the blackouts,
which Sun knew were coming. The facilities do have back-up power generators, but
she said it was not clear whether they were used because officials knew the
outages would only last a few hours.
(C) Reuters Limited 2001.