PUC Cuts Into Irvine’s Power Plan

Only three days after Irvine signed up the first customer of its fledgling municipal power utility, a state Public Utilities Commission vote has dimmed the city’s prospects of getting into the electricity business.

The City Council on Monday hastily created a public wilderness center -- a trailer -- at Quail Hill and committed to providing it with electricity from a portable generator. It was a tactical move in anticipation of a Thursday PUC ruling that increased operating costs of municipal utilities unless they were serving customers before the vote.

However, the PUC also ruled that to avoid the added costs, municipal power providers must have had retail customers before Feb. 1, 2001, and not simply contracted to itself, as Irvine did.

Irvine officials said Friday they will continue to explore a municipal utility. “If you know anything about Irvine, you know we don’t give up easily,” Councilman Michael Ward said.

Ward and three other council members voted Monday to create the wilderness center; Christina Shea was the sole dissenter.

After the energy crisis of 2000-01, Irvine and several other California cities formed municipal power utilities in the hope of avoiding future shortages and creating revenue. Most of these utilities exist only on paper while cities study their viability. Irvine passed an ordinance in February 2002 to establish its utility and expects to decide by late August whether to proceed.

But the cost of the electricity Irvine might provide went up Thursday when the PUC ruled that new municipal customers will have to pay exit-fee surcharges to compensate for the high electricity prices the state paid during the energy crisis.