Plugging Into Energy Conservation

There will still be plenty of holiday lights in Ventura County this season, but only after 8 p.m. At least that is the plan from Southern California Edison, which wants people to turn on their decorations later in the evening in an effort to conserve power.

Many shoppers at local stores Wednesday said they were not aware of the plan but would do their best to reduce energy consumption.

“I was going to turn them on from 6 to 9, but I’m flexible. I could switch that to 8 to 10,” said Jim Jelinski, who was buying six boxes of deluxe icicles Wednesday.

He said many neighbors in his east Ventura neighborhood waste electricity by leaving the lights on all night. He already faces an electricity bill that increases as much as 20% during the holidays.

“I guess I should be more concerned about the energy [shortage] but until it happens to me I’m not,” Jelinski said.

Caroline Ruiz said residents in her neighborhood are in bed about 8 p.m. and have already turned off the lights. “We don’t use a lot of energy in our neighborhood,” she said.

The tight supply of electricity, mainly a result of too few power plants producing not enough electricity, has prompted Southern California Edison to declare a Stage 2 emergency, which requires certain prearranged customers to turn off electricity for a number of hours.

One such customer was an Oxnard bakery left with rising dough Tuesday that went to the trash instead of the oven.

“We are not happy, to say the least,” said chief plant engineer Mike Stalsworth at Maple Leaf Bakery.

Stalsworth said the company agreed to electric service that could be interrupted before deregulation, and now is trapped in the program for several more years. He said power curtailments have cost the bakery $126,000 this year, and his rates have soared from about $40,000 a month to as much as $110,000 a month.

Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn said he believes many in the county have not focused on the extent of the electricity problem, and said local leaders need to push legislators to make regulatory changes. Deborah Ventura, who was buying old-fashioned bubbling candle lights to plug into her wall, said she conserves power by removing her night lights and using the Christmas-themed lights instead. “It’s possible to achieve a theme without using extra electricity by just replacing something you already have,” she said.

Although holiday lights account for only 1,400 megawatts a day compared with the total state consumption of 32,000 megawatts, that small bit could make the crucial difference, according to Rudy Gonzales, Edison’s regional manager in eastern Ventura County and western San Fernando Valley.

“If we had people ‘off line’ in the peak time, that might give us the cushion we need to avoid declaring a Stage 3,” he said.

In a Stage 3 emergency, rolling blackouts are forced on many customers.

Although the crisis is expected to last up to 10 days, the electricity problems resulting from deregulation are not expected to clear up any time soon. The state’s basic problem, experts say, is that no new power plants have been built in 10 years to keep up with an economy that is steadily using more electricity.