By the OGJ Online Staff
HOUSTON, Mar. 20�The California Independent System Operator ordered utilities to restore power to customers Tuesday afternoon, after calling for rolling blackouts throughout the state for 4� hr earlier in the day.
ISO officials were optimistic that electricity would not have to be interrupted for the rest of the day, until possibly 6-7 p.m. PST during the evening peak.
�We are looking at a possibility to take load off again between 6 and 7. It could be as much as 1,000 Mw,� said Patrick Dorinson, spokesman for the ISO, during a 2 p.m. PST teleconference. The ISO is still laboring with 12,000 Mw off line.
Whether more blackouts are ordered depends on how the imports of electricity from the Northwest hold up. The ISO managed to round up a few more megawatts and demand fell due to conservation, allowing power to be restored throughout the state, Dorinson said.
�Negotiations with the Western Area Power Administration for 300 Mw came through as well as more support through the ties,� he said. Several large units that had been off line were in the process of being restored to operation. Plus, some smaller units were expected to come off the outage list Tuesday night.
California can expect this kind uncertainty throughout the summer because new generation won�t be on line in time to serve the state, and the drought in the Northwest is restricting imports of hydroelectric power, experts said. Further, the qualifying facilities (QF) or smaller independent cogeneration plants that sell power directly to the utilities have not been paid for 3 months. The loss of the QFs will continue to strain the system unless the legislature finds a way for them to get compensated for the power they produce, said Dorinson.
�Last year at this same time, none of the 6,000 Mw of QFs were off line. This year we have 3,000 Mw of QFs not producing electricity for the grid,� he said.
Although Dorinson said �tomorrow looks better,� he stressed how the grid fares Wednesday and the rest of the week could not be updated until late Tuesday.
