260 Hours of Summer Blackouts Predicted

California will experience up to 260 hours of electrical blackouts this summer, an industry group predicted Tuesday in one of the gloomiest assessments of the state’s energy crisis.

In announcing its bleak calculations, the North American Electric Reliability Council said that many of the assumptions made by the agency that runs California’s electrical transmission system appear overly optimistic.

That agency, the California Independent System Operator, has not made any projections of the number of hours of blackouts. But it has said the state could face 34 days this summer in which blackouts are possible, assuming Californians use the same amount of electricity as they did last summer.

The Princeton, N.J.-based reliability council said California is likely to fall 4,500 to 5,500 megawatts short of peak demand each month this summer. In other words, at the time of day when energy use is at its highest, the state might not be able to serve the equivalent of about 3.75 million homes.

That is consistent with Cal-ISO’s calculations of what could happen in the worst of three possible scenarios for the summer but about 1,500 megawatts more than the agency’s most likely scenario.

The newest projections are far more pessimistic than those issued earlier this year by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a Massachusetts-based firm that predicted about 20 hours of blackouts this summer. On the other end of the spectrum, Reliant Energy, a major owner of power plants, has quoted consultants’ projections that the state faces 1,100 hours of blackouts during all of 2001.

The reliability council said the state could experience power emergencies during non-peak periods as well as those of peak electricity use. The nonprofit corporation was formed after the 1965 blackouts in the Northeast to promote electricity reliability.

In its 64-page assessment, the group questioned several assumptions made by Cal-ISO and other analysts, including whether all of the anticipated new electric generators will come into service in time.

“Since new generation requires a shakedown period during initial start-up,” the industry group said in its report, “it is unlikely that all of the new generation will be on schedule and 100% available.”

The council also projects that Californians will conserve less electricity than state regulators hope--in part because of the newness of rate increases and incentives designed to curb usage--and that the summer may be warmer than normal.

A spokesman for Gov. Gray Davis disputed the forecast, saying it assumes the worst.

“We are preparing for the worst and hoping for the best,” said the spokesman, Steve Maviglio.

He contended that the industry group underestimates the amount of electricity expected to be available for purchase from the Northwest.

Cal-ISO spokeswoman Lorie O’Donley did not criticize the report directly, saying that she did not know how its authors arrived at their underlying assumptions. But she questioned the notion of forecasting blackouts: “We don’t think that’s possible to do, given the variables that are in play.”

The report cautions that New York City and New England should be closely watched, despite having adequate resources to meet demand, noting that they are sensitive to long-term heat waves or higher than anticipated outages of generating units.

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Times staff writer Mitchell Landsberg contributed to this story.