In his Jan. 5 inaugural address for his historic fourth term as California’s governor, Jerry Brown proposed an ambitious expansion of California’s renewable energy goals from 33 to 50 percent by 2030. The current level in 2015 is 20 percent renewables.

However, the 50 percent renewable energy portfolio standard had to be dropped from Assembly Bill 327, passed on Oct. 7, 2013, due to opposition by large utility companies and energy consumer advocates. Nonetheless, Brown wants to revive it, as well as cutting the use of gasoline by half in California in just 15 years.

The devil is always in the details of such ambitious plans. So we’ll have to wait to see the numbers for the costs or impacts on the environment such a massive and sudden expansion of green power would have on California.

As CalWatchdog.com reported, Brown recently was rebuked by the Little Hoover Commission for failing to disclose to Californians how much the price tag will be for renewable power in California.

The closest Californians can come to understanding the impacts such a huge expansion of green power would have on the environment is Stanford University Prof. Mark Jacobson’s similar plan to expand California’s green power to 100 percent by 2030.  Jacobson’s Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford is funded by billionaire California investor and green-energy proponent Tom Steyer.

New Transmission Lines

Here’s how to figure the amount of needed new transmission lines:

1. Eugene G. Preston, Ph.D., P.E., a consulting electric transmission line engineer, has estimated Jacobson’s 100 percent renewable energy plan for California would require 75,000 miles of new transmission lines across the Western United States.

2. Today green power already has reached 20 percent in California, according to the Renewables Portfolio Standard Quarterly Report for the 2nd Quarter of 2014 by the California Public Utilities Commission. So it would have to increase another 80 percentage points to reach Jacobson’s 100 percent level.

And it would need to increase that another 30 percentage points to reach Brown’s 50 percent level. That also means Brown’s level is 3/8ths of Jacobsen’s level, a useful ratio for us to use. (30 percent more renewables for Brown’s proposal; 80 percent more for Jacobson’s = 3/8.)

3. Let’s use the 3/8 ratio. Jacobson’s 100 percent renewables proposal would require 75,000 miles of new transmission lines. So Brown’s proposal would require 3/8 of that, or 28,125 more miles of transmission lines.

Using standard measurements for the land needed for transmission lines, that 28,125 miles of new lines would amount to 852,272 acres, or 1,332 square miles of land acquired for use by the lines.  That would be about the size of the state of Rhode Island at 1,213 square miles.

Preston added:

“Therefore the concept envisioned in the SA [Jacobson’s Scientific American] article is not a workable plan because the transmission problems have not been addressed. The lines aren’t going to get built. The wind is not going to interconnect. The SA article plan is not even a desirable plan. The environmental impact and cost would be horrendous. Lets get realistic.” 

The same problems exist for Brown’s smaller, but still substantial, proposal for 50 percent renewables.

On Friday, Brown is releasing his budget proposal for fiscal year 2015-16, which begins on July 1. Something to look for is if he accounts for this added cost to California’s infrastructure.

By Wayne Lusvardi

California could be headed into another “perfect storm” of coincidental events that may result in an electricity shortage during the hot months of July, August and September.

San Diego Gas & Electric is reported to be finalizing an agreement with the U.S. Navy to reduce power use at the Navy’s San Diego-area bases in the event of a power shortage this summer. 

The Navy is SDG&E’s largest customer. The agreement being arranged with the Navy would free up power to offset grid losses due to the unplanned shut down of nuclear power plants in California. This is the first time such an arrangement has been made with San Diego-area military bases.

Of concern is the long-term outage of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station due to mechanical problems. San Onofre can generate power for 1.4 million homes. Additionally, the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant along the central coast of California has been shut down, reportedly due to jellyfish clogging the ocean water intake used to cool the boilers. 

Authorities disagree in newspapers about the risk of rolling blackouts this summer. But the Independent System Operatorserves as the central operator for the state electric grid.  The ISO said that, while statewide reserves are fine, local and regional shortages could emerge. Of particular concern is the San Diego area due to the San Onofre shutdown.

San Diego Hit by Blackout Nov. 8, 2011

The same area was hit by a blackout on Nov. 8, 2011, reportedly due to human error by a utility worker at an electrical substation in Arizona. Some authorities say that, even with the error, the grid should have not failed. 

A report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and National Electric Reliability Commission as to the causes of the blackout has not been released yet. Fortunately, the Nov. 8 outage was contained within the San Diego region, although the problem started in another region to the east.  The electric grid is set up to contain outages within each region. That apparently failed in the San Diego blackout.

The sequence of events is known. But if the cause cannot be found, this will add a further risk of uncertainty to the San Diego region. A fact in the Nov. 8 outage is that failure could not be contained in the Arizona grid and spread to San Diego. This raises a question as to whether other areas of California than San Diego could be susceptible to rolling blackouts this summer, even if power reserves are ample. 

Power Outages Have Risen 350 Percent Since 2007

Power outages affecting 50,000 people or more have been growing over the past decade in North America.  But outages really took off from 2007 to 2011 when outages increased from 100 to 350 per year.

Electric companies have interruptible power service agreements with large industries to shut down during blackouts so that homes, hospitals and transit systems are not affected.  Large industrial users of electricity serve as shadow power plants when they shut down and allow power to be freed up for residential customers.

With California reportedly losing at least 254 businesses in 2011 and 204 in 2010, according to one tally, the number of industries with interruptible service agreements has probably fallen. This should have freed up power possibly to offset any losses from the shutdown of San Onofre.  But that doesn’t seem to have sufficiently made enough additional power capacity available.

Events Have Turned Fast on Power Planners

Southern California is working fast to get back into service two gas-fired power plants in Huntington Beach that were mothballed last year.  This indicates how fast events have turned around on electric capacity planners. 

To comply with regulations, both of the decommissioned Huntington Beach gas power plants had their gas lines severed and three-foot holes were cut in the boilers.

SDG&E is also accelerating the build out of the Sunrise Power Transmission Link into San Diego.  This will bring 1,000 megawatts of power from Imperial County to San Diego County over a 230/500 Kilovolt power line spanning 117-miles.  One problem with this new transmission line is that the electrons transmitted will be from renewable energy projects in Imperial County that cannot be counted on in a blackout.

Wind and solar power plants cannot be depended on for base load power in the event of an outage or rolling blackouts.  California is in the process of shifting 33 percent of its power to alternative energy such as wind and solar power.

A power outage may be a trigger for any civil disturbances anticipated for this summer prior to national elections. The Los Angeles Times has been running a series of suggestive articles on prior riots.  The San Diego and Los Angeles areas could be in for a long hot summer.

By KATY GRIMES

In it’s annual update to the Legislature, the California Public Utilities Commission offered plenty of good news and optimism. But what CPUC President Michael Peevey left out could have been held at another two-hour hearing. And the questions that legislators did not ask Peevey hung in the air like Los Angeles smog.

On Monday, Peevey gave the legislature-mandated annual review of the CPUC to the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce. Despite what might have been a very important review and update to legislators, as well as a golden opportunity to ask some very specific questions about a difficult year, only two legislators were present for the entire presentation: Assemblyman Jeff Gorell, R-Camarillo, and Committee Chairman Steven Bradford, D-Inglewood. Most of the other 13 committee members gave the hearing a cursory glance and a brief stay.

Peevey painted a picture for legislators of a regulatory agency which cares deeply about low-income utility customers and diversity, is committed to the advancement of the smart grid in California, and said that California’s utility companies have spent more than $1 billion on energy efficiency, and $750 million for low-income retrofits.

Peevey insisted that the California Solar Initiative is “doing great, remarkable, and going ahead very, very well.” And, he did credit the federal government with providing a “big federal tax credit” to help the initiative along.

When the presentation came to the PG&E explosion in San Bruno last fall, Peevey said, “While the explosion has gotten a tremendous amount of attention, we’ve all followed pipeline safety practice. Nonetheless, it had very severe consequences. The whole nation is watching.”

Peevey added, “Shortly after the accident, tragedy forced us to take a look at how we regulate pipeline safety.” This led to the formation of an independent review panel made up of energy experts from academia, utility companies and union representation.

Annual Review

In anticipation of Monday’s hearing, last week Peevey provided committee members a PowerPoint handout of the CPUC annual review. The handout contained much more information about the San Bruno PG&E gas line explosion than was discussed in the hearing, including a timeline of important events “and CPUC actions.”

“If anything positive at all came out of the San Bruno explosion, it’s how we look at safety,” Peevey told legislators.

Although the timeline accounts for new rules for pipeline operations, there was no discussion or specific information about how the CPUC plans to hold PG&E accountable in the future, specifically, so that another San Bruno never happens again.

Paul Clanon, the executive director for the CPUC, told legislators about a project PG&E is working on at the Cow Palace in South San Francisco. When completed, he said, the project “will be a new way of looking at pipeline safety. We will be an industry leader for the U.S., and partner with the National Safety Transportation Board.”

And in December, the CPUC issued an order to PG&E to lower the pressure on all pipelines that were the same age and size as the San Bruno pipeline. “We’re doing that not because we know there is a deficit underground, but because we don’t know there isn’t,” said Clanon.

Still unanswered is whether PG&E will have to pay the entire tab for the San Bruno explosion, or if ratepayers will be forced to pay for it.

Peevey spent a substantial amount of time explaining to legislators about the many diversity policies and practices the CPUC has implemented through the Utility Supplier Diversity Program. “The Commission has had an incredible effort of diversity — minorities, women, and veteran-owned businesses and suppliers,” Peevey said.

“So why is it?” asked Assemblyman Sandre Swanson, D-Oakland. Consider looking at “some of the best practices that many of the companies have used.”

Peevey said that, in 2009, procurement from diverse suppliers increased, surpassing more than $3 billion. Both Verizon and AT&T exceeded 40 percent, PG&E exceeded 30 percent, Southern California Gas reached more than 37 percent and Southern California Edison exceeded nearly 28 percent.

Energy Efficiency Programs

The California Renewable Portfolio Standard, mandated by the Legislature, was established in 2002 under Senate Bill 1078, and accelerated in 2006 under Senate Bill 107. The RPS is one of the most ambitious and aggressive renewable energy standards in the country, according to the CPUC.

The program requires investor-owned utilities, electric service providers, and community choice aggregators to increase procurement from eligible renewable energy resources by at least 1 percent of their retail sales annually, reaching 20 percent by 2010, and aiming for 33 percent by 2020.

Peevey told the committee that the CPUC is continuing to push on the renewable standard, and added, “I think the state can go to 40 percent renewables by 2020.”

Bradford asked Peevey why there hasn’t been an uptick in jobs with the increasing workforce diversification and energy efficiency mandates and subsidies. “Future jobs are on the come,” said Peevey. “There’s obviously been a lot of work created in the state. We have to make sure that benefits are distributed more equitably than has been in the past.”

While Peevey was focused on the Legislature-mandated diversification, low-income programs for bill assistance, and energy efficiency programs, he did not address the expensive “Million Solar Roofs” program, which has fallen very short of its goal.

The California Solar Initiative, often referred to as the “CSI,” is the solar rebate program for customers of the investor-owned utilities: Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric.

Despite having spent $2.2 billion so far, the utilities are coming up short on the solar roof initiative — and the budget is largely spent.  In a recent legislative informational hearing, the utilities said that the $2.2 billion subsidy program aimed at adding 1,940 megawatts of solar power in investor-owned utility territory by 2016, and 3,000 megawatts by 2018, is falling short of the mark as funds run out.

The utilities have only reached 790 megawatts of new distributed photovoltaic systems, after spending more than $2 billion in subsidies, while maxing out the ratepayer-funded spending caps for the non-residential solar subsidies.

Legislators were quiet about this subject.

In 2010 the CPUC approved eight grants totaling $9.3 million, the first of the solar initiative’s grant solicitations. Peevy said then, “The California Solar Initiative is one of the greatest focused efforts to promote solar photovoltaics ever seen and is designed to help build a sustainable solar industry. Integrating substantial amounts of PV into the grid is part of that vision.”

One energy expert, who asked that his name not be used, said that it was apparent to him that committee members did not read the advance copy of the CPUC presentation. And with only two of the 15 committee members present for the bulk of the hearing, as legislators came and went, few questions were raised on the issues Peevey presented.

CPUC Controversy In Oakley

“What happened?” committee chairman Bradford asked Peevey, referring to the Oakley, Calif. power plant controversy involving the CPUC.

“I was persuaded — that we needed it,” said Peevey.

And again legislators were quiet. No additional questions were asked.

The CPUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates, an “independent” division of the California Public Utilities Commission, originally had opposed the Oakley power plant. It previously warned PG&E customers that, as the utility continued to seek approval for the plant (despite original CPUC denial), approval would stick ratepayers with $1.5 billion in costs “for unneeded new electric capacity of 586 megawatts.”

More than once during the hearing when questions came up about his support of controversial projects orissues, Peevey told committee members, “I am only one commission member.”

Tomorrow: The Division of Ratepayer Advocates‘ annual review to the Legislature

Read the entire CPUC update.