No Smoke Detectors – No Fire Sprinklers – No 24 Hour Security Patrol to Detect Fires Early – No Technology – No Security Cameras – Not Even a Webcam – there's More Security at a 7-Eleven – No Nothin' – No One Will Buy Your House Now Either – "Remember there's Another Hangar Too"!
Dana Point will consider undergrounding utility lines to improve views and safety
“AFTER” – spending $200,000 to remodel their Dana Point home, Marilyn and Len Gardner realized a huge utility pole with as many as 20 power lines connected took away their peekaboo ocean view, and more importantly, they said, posed a safety hazard for their property.
So, Marilyn Gardner took to the NextDoor app and voiced her concerns about the dangers and unsightliness of power lines in the community. Interest, especially in the Lantern District overlooking Dana Point Harbor, grew quickly, she said.
“We had a lively conversation,” Gardner said of the response on social media. Within a few months, she and her husband founded the Poles and Lines Coalition and began talking with neighbors about what could be done. Their group grew to now more than 300 members.
“If we want to be a world-class city, we have to look a certain way,” Gardner said.
The P.A.L.Coalition then requested the city assess the location of overhead utilities and develop a cost estimate to underground the lines.
Recently, the Dana Point City Council unanimously approved hiring a consultant for $49,000 to see what it would take to bury utility lines citywide. The plan would be ambitious – the city’s cost alone to underground areas in the public domain could be as much as $500 million.
The consultant is expected to be back with a report by early summer.
“Enough of our residents in the Lantern District have done their due diligence,” Mayor Joe Muller said about the council’s willingness to move forward with the initial first step. P.A.L worked for 14 months, he said, holding community meets, meeting with experts and city officials to get the message out.
“In a bluff-top city, it’s expensive to go underground,” Muller said. “We can’t answer the questions until we know more; otherwise, we’re just shooting in the dark.”
The consultant will complete a citywide assessment and map all of the utility lines, develop a cost estimate on burying the lines and update the city’s Utility Undergrounding Assessment District Policy to meet current regulations and procedures.
Muller said it would be critical to find an appropriate funding source for the project.
“We’re looking at utility assessment districts and how we could set these up,” he said. “That how we can decide if we want to do this or not.”
Muller said that many times, when lines are buried, the costs to hook up to those lines are extremely expensive – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars. Dana Point is an older community with many people on a fixed income, so figuring out how to make the undergrounding equitable to all is critical, he said.
“Everyone thinks underground is a good idea until they have to pay for the connection,” Muller said. “How do you force it on people who don’t want it?”
About six years ago, residents in Capistrano Beach also expressed interest in undergrounding utilities, but the idea fizzled because few were keen on the high connection costs once the utilities are buried.
Muller added that the new federal infrastructure bill signed by Pres. Joe Biden in November may offer help.
Gardner also points to that as an option.
Meanwhile, she said she is ecstatic about the city’s response, but plans to do her best to reach more people in the community over the next few months while the consultant undertakes the city’s study. Her goal is to hold an in-person community meeting sometime next year.
“We’re in it for the long-haul, whatever it takes,” she said. “It’s unacceptable to have this blight on our beautiful city. I know this isn’t a done deal, but it does mean it’s starting. To have the 5-0 vote is so gratifying, and it took a lot of effort and work, but it was worth it.”
Gardner also gave props to Councilman Mike Frost, who represents the Lantern District. “He was behind every meeting.”
Blackouts Threaten Entire U.S. West This Summer as Heat Awaits
First they struck California, then Texas. Now blackouts are threatening the entire U.S. West as nearly a dozen states head into summer with too little electricity.
From New Mexico to Washington, power grids are being strained by forces years in the making — some of them fueled by climate change, others by the fight against it. If a heat wave strikes the whole region at once, the rolling outages that darkened Southern California and Silicon Valley last August will have been previews, not flukes.
“It’s really the same case in different parts of the West,” said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive officer of the California Independent System Operator, which runs most of the state’s grid. “It’s revealed competition for scarce resources that we haven’t seen for some time.”
The specter of blackouts highlights a paradox of the clean-energy transition: Extreme weather fueled by climate change is exposing cracks in society’s move away from fossil fuels, even as that shift is supposed to rein in the worst of global warming. States shuttering coal and gas-fired power plants simply aren’t replacing them fast enough to keep pace with the vagaries of an unstable climate, and the region’s existing power infrastructure is woefully vulnerable to wildfires (which threaten transmission lines), drought (which saps once-abundant hydropower resources) and heat waves (which play havoc with demand).On Wednesday, California’s grid managers warned that while they’re better positioned than last summer, the risk of power shortages during extreme heat remains a clear possibility.
For many, California’s power crisis in 2020 was the first indication of how serious the regional power shortfall had become. While the blackouts highlighted the state’s reliance on solar power — a resource that ebbs in the evening just as demand picks up — an equally significant problem was California’s dependence on imported electricity. Utilities routinely source power supplies from out of state, drawing electricity across high-voltage transmission lines to wherever it’s needed. But last summer, neighboring states coping with the same heat wave as California were straining to keep their own lights on, and imports were hard to come by.
This year, that dynamic is playing out on a larger scale. Across the West, states have grown dependent on importing power from one another. That works fine in temperate weather, when electricity demand is relatively low. But it’s a problem when a widespread heatwave blankets the entire region. The Western Electricity Coordinating Council, which oversees electricity grids throughout the western U.S. and Canada, estimates that without imports, Nevada, Utah and Colorado could be short of power during hundreds of hours this year, or the equivalent of 34 days. Arizona and New Mexico could be short for enough hours to total 17 days, according to a report by the organization that looked at worst-case scenarios to help states develop plans to head off potential outages.“It’s no longer necessarily a California problem or a Phoenix problem,” said Jordan White, vice president of strategic engagement for the group, known as WECC. “Everyone is chasing the same number of megawatts.”
While blackouts aren’t a guarantee in any region, traders are already betting on supply shortages and sending power prices soaring throughout the West. At the heavily traded Palo Verde hub in Arizona, prices have nearly quadrupled since last summer’s outages, while the Pacific Northwest’s Mid-Columbia hub has tripled.“We are already seeing record-breaking prices across the West, some of which can be attributed to a fear factor being priced in,” said JP McMahon, a market associate for Wood Mackenzie. “Last year was a bit of a wake-up call.”
The reasons behind the shortfall are two-fold: Climate change is making it harder to forecast demand for electricity while the shift to clean energy is straining power supplies.
Where utilities and grid managers were once able to rely on predictable consumption patterns season to season — more air conditioner use in August, less in October — they’re now reckoning with record-hot summers and historic winter storms that cause great, unexpected surges in demand.
“It’s becoming challenging to take out the crystal ball to know with any level of certainty how hot it it’s going to be,” White said.
At the same time, older coal and gas plants capable of providing power 24 hours a day are being pushed out by climate change regulations and their own dwindling profitability. In the West, power generation from such plants slipped 6% from 2010 through 2018, according to WECC. While wind and solar capacity have more than tripled in the region, the output from those resources varies by the hour, making them harder to rely on during an unexpected demand crunch. Massive batteries can help make up the difference, but their installation is just beginning.
It’s a global phenomenon. Sweden this summer is bracing for power outages and curbing electricity exports after nuclear retirements have left the country with too little spare capacity to balance big swings in demand. In China last winter, even a surplus of coal plants couldn’t keep the lights on during a severe cold blast.
At this point, no subregion in WECC’s coverage area generates enough electricity to meet its own needs during periods of high demand; they all rely on imports to avoid outages.
In the aftermath of the California crisis, utilities have been signing up contracts for more emergency power supplies and are trying to make sure they aren’t relying on the same suppliers as everyone else. Some entities, including the Imperial Irrigation District of Southern California are working to curb their reliance on imports. But it’s not clear that all utilities in the highest-risk areas plan to do much differently.
The situation is, if not dire, getting close. Temperatures in the West are expected to be above average through the summer, with the worst heat slamming the Southwest. More than 84% of land in the 11 Western states is gripped by drought.
Following last summer’s outages, California is among the best positioned going into summer. The state is plugging roughly 1,500 megawatts of batteries into the grid, has postponed the retirement of several aging gas plants and raised the price cap on power trades to incentivize imports if outside supplies are necessary and available.
Even if imports are readily available for those that need them, there’s no guarantee that transmission lines will be able to carry those electrons where they need to go. Extreme weather can take out the high-voltage conduits that stitch the Western states together, and wildfires are notorious for knocking out transmission lines. Although it received little attention at the time, a major transmission line in the Pacific Northwest that suffered damage in a storm last spring limited power flows into California throughout the summer energy crisis.
Energy consultant Mike Florio, who used to sit on the board of California’s grid operator, said other states can learn from the West’s dilemma. They should keep a variety of resources as they decarbonize, learning how to balance the daily rhythms of solar and wind, and not move too quickly to shutter old gas-burning plants that can provide power in a pinch.
“We forget that we’re still learning a lot about how to run a system like this,” Florio said. “We probably want to keep our existing gas capacity, at least in reserve. It may be used less, but something that’s already built is cheap insurance.”
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State agencies and electric utilities are scrambling to shore up power supplies in hopes of avoiding the rolling blackouts that left 800,000 California homes and businesses without power during a record-breaking heatwave last August.
That means gas-fired power plants could be called on more, instead of less, at a time when the state is trying wean itself from fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases.
Already last year, state regulators extended the life of outdated gas-fired power generators in Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Redondo Beach and Oxnard, all of which had been scheduled to shut down at the end of 2020. And now, the state is considering a second extension for the Redondo Beach plant, which is currently scheduled to close at the end of this year.
Environmentalists are at odds with regulators and utilities over how to address the shifting energy landscape. But both sides agree that more needs to be done to meet clean energy goals at a time of when the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant and several gas-fired plants are scheduled to close, climate change is increasing summer electricity demands, and the phasing out of gasoline cars and natural-gas buildings will boost year-round electricity needs.
Legislators are also becoming increasingly aware of the steep challenge ahead if California is to meet its targets of 60% green energy by 2030 and 100% by 2045.
“To meet our state’s goals, we must build six gigawatts of new renewable and storage each year … equivalent to powering approximately 4 million homes with clean energy every year,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in a March 19 letter to California Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer. Feinstein called on the commission to let her know of its priorities for possible inclusion in any future federal infrastructure package, such as the proposal now being prepared by the White House.
But the more urgent concern is getting the state through the next couple summers.
Patchwork plan
Like the deadly February power outages in Texas, California’s shortfalls last summer have been linked to more extreme weather resulting from climate change. The biggest threat to California, though, is heat rather than cold.
Another difference is the extent of the threat, with widespread agreement that California’s electrical grid is more integrated than the grid in Texas, and that California has more contingencies in place to address temporary power shortages.
But as last summer proved, that was not enough.
The state’s “Final Root Cause Analysis” found the rolling blackouts on Aug. 14 and 15 resulted from a combination of increased demand, inadequate supplies, a now-fixed software glitch, the export of power to out-of-state utilities, gas-fired plants unable to run at full capacity and out-of-state suppliers with no energy left to sell to California.
It was a problem anticipated, in part, in a state readiness report for the summer of 2020 that was written by the non-profit, quasi-governmental agency known as CAISO, which coordinates 80% of power delivery in the state. The report noted that if a heatwave extended beyond California to neighboring states that sell energy to the Golden State, there would be risk of an electricity shortage.
In an effort to shore up supplies for this summer, the state Public Utilities Commission on Thursday, March 25, will consider a proposal that, among other things, calls for a 2.5% increase in the amount of energy procured by the state’s three major utilities, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Pacific Gas and Electric.
The plan also seeks to reduce demand at critical junctures by adjusting and increasing the possible number of “critical peak pricing” periods when utilities charge the most for electricity, and by allowing large commercial customers to pay a lower rate if they allow the utility to reduce the amount of power available when there’s a threat of blackouts.
But green-power activists oppose the proposal, saying there should be more emphasis on reducing demand and less on increasing supplies from existing sources.
“All of that gas burning is what we need to get away from, but instead we’re leaning into it,” said V. John White, executive director of the non-profit Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies. Along with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, White’s organization wants strict limits on utilities procuring additional energy from gas-fired plants.
White and other environmentalists also are calling for the commission to require utilities to offer more incentives to residential customers — particularly low-income residents — to use less energy during critical periods and an easier process for residential customers with solar panels to sell their energy to the electrical grid.
Edison, which provided recommendations to the commission and supports the proposal, said those suggested alternatives aren’t practical to get in place by summer.
“These programs take a fair amount of effort, so we are focused on what would give us the most resources quickly,” said William Walsh, Edison’s vice president of energy procurement.
And where will the additional energy come from, if needed?
“That’s the key question now,” Walsh said. “There’s only so much that exists. There’s probably very little left so we’ll probably be looking outside of the state.”
He acknowledged that there could be cost increases for customers but said he couldn’t predict how much.
Gas-fired plants
Natural-gas power plants in Huntington Beach and Long Beach fired up long-planned, new generators in 2020. Intended to replace existing units, the new generators are smaller, and get twice as much energy from the same amount of gas. Unlike the old generators, they don’t suck in ocean water for cooling and so do not harm sea life.
The units typically operate only in the evening and early morning, when solar and wind power is minimal. Unlike the old generators, which can take as much as three days to start running, the new units can start up in 20 minutes.
The last of the old generators at those two plants, as well as those in Redondo Beach and Oxnard, most built in the 1950s and 1960s, had been scheduled to shut down in 2020 as part of a state mandate to eliminate power units that harmed sea life. In Redondo Beach and Oxnard, there were no replacements built because of the transition to clean energy. As a result, the plants were scheduled to shut down entirely.
But, last year, concerns over adequate power supplies resulted in extensions for the old units. In Redondo Beach, where local opposition to the extensions was strongest, a new closure date was set for the end of 2021. At the other three sites, the approved shutdown date is 2023.
On Friday, March 26, a committee representing a host of state regulatory agencies will consider recommending a second extension of the Redondo Beach’s units, this time until 2023.
“The two heat storms in 2020 showed that the California planning margins need to be increased to account for more extreme heat events,” said Public Utilities Commission spokesperson Terrie Prosper. “Concerns for 2021 will carry over into 2022 and 2023, until sufficient new resources can be built to meet the new planning needs based on extreme weather events.”
Long-term solutions
Then there’s the longer-range energy needs, where renewable energy activists disagree with the commission on several fronts. Differences include including how much clean juice should be required by mid-decade and how carbon emissions are measured in reaching the 2030 goal of a 60% reduction.
The state was ahead of schedule in meeting its 33% reduction goal for 2020, but some environmentalists take issue with that calculation and point to the old gas-fired plants that are still operating to help buoy their case.
While Prosper said the commission has called for 8,000 megawatts of new clean energy over the next four years — including 2,000 megawatts of storage capacity by this summer that was not available last year — activists say that’s not enough. The addition over four years would be a 17% increase to the maximum amount of energy pumped out at any time last year.
One clean-energy proposal getting legislators attention is the prospect of building windmills offshore of Northern California. Unlike onshore wind farms, those offshore would produce energy around the clock because of constant winds, according to Elizabeth Nickerson of Environment California.
Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, has introduced a bill, AB 525, that would establish goals of 3,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2030 and 10,000 by 2040. Meanwhile, a climate-change executive order signed by President Biden a week after being sworn calls on a sharp increase in offshore wind initiatives and a $1 trillion-plus infrastructure proposal being developed by the White House includes clean-energy construction.
With an emphasis on the need for power then the sun isn’t shining, expanding battery storage of solar and wind power is a key priority. A particularly ambitious proposal would turn Riverside County’s abandoned Eagle Mountain iron mine into a pump-storage plant, in which water would be pumped from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir when the sun out and energy is cheap. When the sun sets, the upper reservoir would release its water to drive energy-producing turbines en route back to the lower reservoir.
The plant could deliver as much as 1,300 megawatts and has received all necessary permits. The sticking point is the $3 billion price tag for construction.
“It’s a question of investing in infrastructure at a time when the utilities are trying to provide the lowest cost energy,” said Patrick Sinclair, head of the non-profit California Alliance for Renewable Energy Solutions, which is funded in part by Eagle Mountain’s developers. “How do you move forward at a time when the emphasis is on the lowest cost options and the lowest cost option is fossil fuels?”
Edison’s Walsh said it’s not yet time to pursue the project.
“We don’t see a need for this type of long-term storage until the end of the decade or maybe the beginning of the next one, although we’re open to additional information,” he said.
But environmentalists say the commission needs to be more proactive in pursuing long-term projects, despite the expense.
“Not investing in large-scale infrastructure is going to cost us in the long run,” White said.
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