With summer and the expectation of hotter weather only days away, California regulators last week took several tiny steps aimed at squeezing more megawatts into the supply mix this summer and shoring up financially troubled Southern California Edison Co., the utility hovering on the edge of bankruptcy despite all the good news being spread around by state officials this week.

On a temporary basis for this summer, the California Public Utilities Commission removed two impediments to the quick hook-up of natural gas-fired distributed generation units, any of which could help forestall rolling blackouts this summer. Under a state law passed last year, renewable sources of distributed generation were given preference for state-backed incentives, but the CPUC’s action gives the same incentives for this year to nonrenewable energy units, such as gas-fired micro-turbines and fuel cells.

For units that qualify, the CPUC is suspending normal distribution and transmission requirements and adopting a heat recovery and efficiency standard for the nonrewable-powered onsite power generation units that is the same as applied to qualifying facility (QF) plants.”Today’s decision will help do whatever we can to get distributed generation on line to help all Californians this summer,” said CPUC President Loretta Lynch.

On another issue, a long-delayed item authorizing Southern California Gas Co. to sell its idle Montebello Underground Storage Facility, the CPUC did not follow through as intended in freeing up an extra 27 Bcf of supplies from the Montebello field for use this summer in helping keep down gas prices for in-state generation plants. The item was postponed until the next CPUC meeting, June 28.

For the near-comatose agreement to help restore the Edison utility, the CPUC took three steps regarding the utility’s ratemaking that are part of the agreement with the governor, the so-called “MOU” (memorandum of understanding). Edison will remain on a performance-based ratemaking (PBR) system; it will delay having to file another general rate case until 2003; and it will revise a special revenue-sharing system applied to the utility’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Plant.

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