Power Cut to Parts of State

The dreaded summer of 2001 cast its shadow over California on Monday as an early spate of hot weather forced an hour of scattered, statewide electrical blackouts--a precursor of what could be a difficult season ahead.

With more warm weather expected today and tomorrow, state power officials warned that more blackouts might be necessary before an expected cooling trend later in the week. And they acknowledged that this could be the start of a long, dark summer.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” said Ed Riley, a spokesman for the agency that operates the statewide electrical grid, “but yeah, this is the start.”

The blackouts, the first since March, were triggered at 4:45 p.m. after a day in which the California Independent System Operator struggled to patch together enough electricity to keep the grid running without outages. That worked for most of the day, but finally a combination of warm weather and power plant outages proved to be too much for the grid jockeys, and they were forced to order the hourlong blackouts, which affected about 100,000 residential, industrial and commercial customers.

The customers hit by the outage were those served by the state’s three largest private utilities--Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric--plus a number of people served by municipal utilities in Pasadena and Vernon.

As has been the case throughout the power crisis, which began last summer, customers of the municipally owned Los Angeles Department of Water and Power were spared. The DWP operates independently of the statewide grid.

State officials have been warning for months that this summer would probably bring frequent blackouts. Demand for electricity in California has far outstripped the supply, and the state’s ability to import power from elsewhere in the West has been limited by a drought in the Pacific Northwest, which relies heavily on hydroelectricity, and by prices that have soared beyond the reach of the private utilities.

The heat that triggered Monday’s blackouts was far from the hottest that can be expected this summer. Temperatures ranged from the 70s along the Southern California coast to 80 degrees in downtown Los Angeles, 95 degrees in Northridge and Sacramento, and a statewide high of 104 degrees in Palm Springs.

However, there also were more power plants out of service than officials hope will be the case this summer. In all, about 12,500 megawatts of power were unavailable, mostly because of planned outages for maintenance. That amounts to about one-quarter of the state’s peak summer demand for power.

California uses more electricity in the summer because air conditioners require vast amounts of power. Power officials said the latest blackouts were an ominous sign.

“This is probably typical of what we’ll see this summer, but I would say this was a less than full experience,” said Dick Rosenblum, Edison senior vice president for distribution and transmission.

“Here we go,” said Michael Zenker, California director of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a Massachusetts energy consulting firm. “This is a bad omen for how bad the situation is.”

Rosenblum said about 34,000 Edison customers lost power during the blackouts. They were scattered across Edison’s 50,000-square-mile territory, and included such communities as Irvine, Barstow, Santa Monica, Long Beach and Inglewood, he said.

The blackouts also affected about 54,000 PG&E; customers scattered through Northern and Central California, and about 8,600 customers of SDG&E; in parts of San Diego and Orange counties.

As is typical in such blackouts, the utilities received only a few minutes’ warning from Cal-ISO before they had to pull the plug.

No serious incidents were reported. “People are starting to get the hang of this,” observed Tustin Police Lt. Mike Shanahan, who said he was pleasantly surprised at the ease with which drivers in his Orange County community began treating blacked-out signals as four-way stops.

The blackouts came slightly more than two hours after Cal-ISO officials expressed cautious optimism that they might squeak through the day. Worries in the morning had eased when the state received 1,000 megawatts from a Canadian supplier, and when “interruptible” customers--those who agree to occasionally shut off power in exchange for lower rates--came through when asked.

Riley guessed that the late-afternoon shortage occurred when the interruptible customers turned their power back on. In the past, he said, such customers--usually large businesses and institutions--typically quit work for the day rather than wait around to turn the power back on.

“For some reason today, some of that load came back,” Riley said.

He said it was difficult to immediately determine the extent to which Californians were conserving electricity, and whether poor conservation efforts could be blamed for the blackouts.

Gov. Gray Davis has been exhorting Californians to conserve energy as part of a multi-pronged--and hotly contested--state strategy to cope with power shortages and exorbitant prices.

On Monday, speaking at a news conference in Los Angeles, Davis thanked President Bush “for what he has done to date”--a rare bouquet--but was clearly critical of recent comments made by Vice President Dick Cheney that energy prices should not be capped or regulated under any circumstances, even if the problem threatens the nation’s economy.

“By far the most important thing that the federal government could do for us is to moderate prices, which are staggering,” Davis said. He said it would be a “grave mistake” for the Bush administration to “rigidly adhere to ideology even if it meant hardship for California.”

Also Monday, Davis said he anticipates that a deal to purchase the transmission system of San Diego Gas & Electric “will be resolved before the week is out.” He has offered more than $7 billion to buy the transmission systems of SDG&E;, Edison and PG&E.; So far, only Edison has accepted the deal. PG&E;’s ability to sell its grid has been complicated, if not thwarted, by the company’s decision to file for protection in federal Bankruptcy Court.

Davis has faced difficulty at every turn attempting to rescue the state’s electrical system while staying afloat in a political tar pit.

The latest setback took shape over the past few days as chief executives of several independent power companies turned down the governor’s invitation to a meeting in his office on Wednesday. Davis had sent out the invitations to a dozen chief executives last week. Most responded by offering to send lower-ranking officers.

Davis has relentlessly attacked independent generators, refusing to let up even as he invited them.

“I’m going ask these generators, who have made more money than God sucking money out of California and taking it back to Texas and other Southwest states, to reduce the cost of power for this summer, and to reduce the claims they have on us for money the utilities owe,” he said.

In declining the invitation, Stephen Bergstrom, president and chief operating officer of Dynegy Inc. of Houston, wrote: “We are greatly disturbed by the increasingly virulent rhetoric that is coming from Sacramento.”

Also Monday:

* Democratic lawmakers announced in Sacramento that they are suing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to compel the agency to cap wholesale electricity prices. The agency recently ordered a limited cap, but the legislators said it was not enough.

* The state Senate voted to impose a special tax on the “windfall” profits of energy producers whose earnings have soared astronomically during the last year. The resulting revenue would be returned to income taxpayers in the form of a credit.

* Frustrated by a Republican roadblock, Democratic legislators pushed forward with a parliamentary maneuver to reimburse the state budget for billions in electricity purchases--a last-gasp move that will effectively delay repayment until August.

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Times staff writers Miguel Bustillo, Carl Ingram, Dan Moran and Julie Tamaki in Sacramento, Robin Fields, Geoff Mohan, Nancy Rivera Brooks in Los Angeles, John Glionna in San Francisco, Tony Perry in San Diego, Scott Gold in San Bernardino and Deanne Brandon in Orange County contributed to this story.