A Cry for Early Blackout Warnings

Unisys Corp.’s Mission Viejo center houses 50,000 square feet of computers, including old mainframes that take hours to restart if power is lost suddenly.

Yet when the computer-services company asked for alerts on potential rolling power outages, Southern California Edison offered little help. Citing its own time crunch and fears of looters, the utility offered only general warnings with as little as 10 minutes before a blackout.

“They said, ‘We can’t give you any [individual] notice,’ ” recalled Michael Safranski, facilities manager for the Unisys complex.

The state Public Utilities Commission is expected to weigh in today with a proposal that would require better notification of pending power outages.

With blackouts looming this summer as air conditioners devour precious electricity, business owners have been pushing hard for earlier notice. They say they need more time to gradually shut down assembly lines, distribution centers and computers to avoid harming products, equipment, data and even employees.

Sudden outages “could have dire, even dangerous effects,” said Long Beach port Executive Director Richard D. Steinke. He warned how crippled 200-foot cranes, dangling cargo above holds, would prevent ships from leaving the dock in an emergency.

Edison maintains it can’t provide accurate early warnings, saying the California Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s electrical grid, often gives utilities no more than 10 minutes’ notice of blackouts.

“If we got more lead time, more notice from the [operator], we in turn would provide that to customers,” said William Bryan, Edison’s director of institutional accounts.

In its proposal, one of a number scheduled to be released today, the PUC is likely to replace vague language about a utility using its “best efforts” to notify customers with specific rules on outage warnings. The PUC, which is scheduled to vote on the proposals March 27, may require utilities to post rough blackout rotations on the Internet--something Pacific Gas & Electric in Northern California already does.

The PUC also is expected to recommend ways to fix its now-suspended so-called interruptible program, which gives companies a rate break for greatly reducing electrical use when demand is high.

In the state Legislature, meantime, a bill requiring earlier warnings is among a welter of proposals at a special session on energy issues.

“No-notice shutdowns can cost some of these businesses $500,000 an incident,” said the bill’s sponsor, Assemblyman John Campbell (R-Irvine). A committee rejected his provision for one-hour warnings of outages, but Campbell hopes a requirement for 15 or 20 minutes will be passed.

Under its interruptible program, Kimberly-Clark Corp.’s Fullerton mill shut down 16 times last year and 13 times in January. Each event cost the company $65,000 to $70,000 in lost production and other expenses, bringing the total so far to about $2 million, said Edward Bowersox, the mill’s manager.

But the mill, where 400 workers and high-speed machines churn out huge rolls of paper 24 hours a day, generally had at least a half-hour notice for the voluntary shutdowns, enough to power down efficiently and safely, he said.

“If notice drops to 10 minutes on rolling blackouts, we don’t think we can shut down safely,” Bowersox said.

He worries that the heavy fabric rolls guiding the paper through the process could break free and injure workers if they don’t have time to take precautions as they shut down the huge devices.

“People are working beside and underneath two-story machinery,” Bowersox said. “If the power is shut down abruptly, we don’t know what’s going to come loose.”

Abrupt shutdowns also threaten to scramble the software controlling the mill. They also could double the previous losses per incident because of potential damage and the extra time to bring the computers on line, he said.

Rolling outages, which spread blackouts to blocks of tens of thousands of customers at a time, already have caused widespread economic losses in Northern California, the only area so far to endure the state’s first deliberate blackouts since World War II.

Because neither PG&E; nor the businesses had any experience with sudden outages, near-chaos was the rule.

“We had virtually no notice at all,” said John Greenagel, a spokesman for Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in Sunnyvale.

On a false alarm of a power loss Jan. 17, Santa Clara microchip company Integrated Device Technology Inc. shut down a Salinas plant with 572 workers for three hours. The next day, an actual rolling outage hit the plant for 90 minutes. The damages and lost wages from both days totaled $50,000, an official said.

The cumulative cost of such events for high-technology manufacturers was “very conservatively in the tens of millions of dollars,” said Michelle Montague-Bruno at the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, a trade organization.

Indeed, high-tech companies are the businesses most threatened by outages.

While some companies construct goods out of stable parts, communications chip maker Conexant Systems Inc. creates “products in a continuous chemical process,” immersing silicon wafers the size of salad plates in solutions, said Richard Bluth, the Newport Beach company’s facilities director.

Scores of building-block steps lasting from a minute to 12 hours transform each wafer into tiny chips. Stop those steps before they’re complete, and the product is ruined, Bluth said. And after a sudden shutdown, it can take days to recertify clean rooms for operation and recalibrate hundreds of machines, he said.

Like many California businesses, Conexant is considering investing in its own backup power. But unless the company gets adequate warning of outages, the generators could be of little help because they require 45 minutes or more to power up, according to company officials.

“I cannot overemphasize how important [advanced warning] is to companies like ours,” Bluth said recently at a PUC hearing. He said his company needs at least an hour’s notice.

That much warning is impossible, said Edison’s Bryan, as long as the Independent System Operator continues to avert outages by negotiating last-minute deals. Edison doesn’t want to put out early warnings that prove inaccurate when power is acquired, he said.

And Edison thinks news releases, which contain little detail for fear of encouraging looting, remain the only practical means of disseminating information widely.

The arguments have merit, regulators say. During rolling outages, utilities “are working like maniacs” to cut and restore power, sometimes throwing switches by hand in the field, PUC spokeswoman Kyle Devine said.

Often, a one-hour notification “just isn’t possible,” Devine said. “And I can’t imagine requiring utilities to call everyone” threatened by interruptions.

But Internet-linked programs such as PG&E;’s hold more promise. The San Francisco utility arranges its power circuits from Bakersfield to Eureka into 14 blocks of 150,000 to 200,000 customers each and puts the block number on customers’ bills. On days when energy supplies are tight, a pop-up box on PG&E;’s Web site shows which blocks are in line for outages.

Bryan said his company will review PUC proposals, any new laws and outside input before launching anything similar. To many in Southern California, though, the PG&E; program sounds like a good start.

“Any kind of base notification like that, and we can at least start the planning process,” said Kimberly-Clark’s Bowersox.