Sadly, it’s not surprising that the California Public Utilities Commission denied a request by San Diego Gas & Electric Co. to buy power that would have enabled developers to build two urgently needed “peaker” generators in Otay Mesa and near Santee. After all, this politically appointed regulatory agency has caused blackouts before.
But the reasoning was preposterous: Commissioners said they were simply being frugal on behalf of ratepayers.
This is the same commission that is leading utilities on a forced march to buy 33 percent of their supply by 2020 from “renewable” sources. Most comes from wind and solar, which despite advances remain among the most expensive power technologies in the world. And they don’t produce at all when the wind doesn’t blow, or the sun isn’t shining.
In contrast, the new, high-efficiency peakers use natural gas, which is abundant and cheap – and may be for decades if President Barack Obama doesn’t outlaw the revolution in production technology known as fracking.
We note that SDG&E doesn’t make a nickel buying power; the cost is passed directly to consumers. So it has no incentive to overstate the need for the generators.
This raises a deeply troubling aspect of the PUC’s decision last week: Commissioners also said the power wasn’t needed.
After the 2000-01 power crisis, the PUC’s biggest planning debacle, California law removed from state bureaucrats the primary responsibility for keeping the lights on and put utility engineers back in charge, their role for the previous 60 years or so.
In 2009, SDG&E saw potential for shortages by 2014, so it asked suppliers for bids, selecting the Otay Mesa and Santee projects as the least expensive, most reliable options. This was long before last year’s shutdown of San Onofre, the giant nuclear plant that generated 20 percent of SDG&E’s supply.
Now the California Energy Commission – the agency that forecasts statewide supply and demand – warns that San Diego County indeed faces shortages, particularly if federal regulators don’t allow San Onofre to restart.
Planners say the region would already be coping with rolling blackouts and other emergency conservation measures if SDG&E hadn’t built the Sunrise Powerlink, the high-voltage line from Imperial County that was bitterly opposed by backcountry NIMBYs – and ironically, by so-called environmentalists, even though much of our renewable energy comes across the line.
We hope that county Supervisor Dianne Jacob, who led opponents of the vital power line, and San Diego City Councilman Scott Sherman, who lobbied against the Santee generator, are paying attention.
The plain truth is that wind and solar, which clearly have environmental merits, are more expensive, less reliable and need fossil-fueled backups. Yet regulators have denied the region an insurance plan, betting that a hot summer won’t send the nation’s most advanced economy into yet another round of Third World rolling blackouts.