Even with stepped up state efforts for developing peakingplants, conservation and new power contracts, the key wild card forwhether California survives this summer’s expected supplyshortfalls is fickle hydroelectric power that is tied to anunpredictable, complex set of weather and environmental factors.With the end nearing for the West’s typical rainy season, stateofficials are newly optimistic about California’s hydro resourcesbeing at normal levels this summer, but in the Pacific Northwestthe prospects continued to be dour Monday as Seattle basked insunny, 60-degree weather.

Ideally, if there is a shortage of hydro, California wouldrather see it inside its own borders with the rainfall being atleast normal in Washington and Oregon, said an official at thestate energy commission who is monitoring hydro prospects. As itstood Monday, the Pacific Northwest was expected to be on average5,000 MW below normal this spring and 2,000 MW down this summer,particularly in July and August, the official noted.

“My guess is that we have a reasonable chance of a normal hydroyear in California,” said the energy commission staff analyst, whonoted that the reservoir levels, snowpack and rainfall are all nowapproaching normal values following the past month of rainy weatherthroughout the state.

“The dire situation for California’s hydro now is pretty muchoff the table, but the Northwest might be another story. Theyhaven’t gotten much rain in the last few weeks.”

On the positive side, the prospect is for Northwest shortages tobe the smallest at the peak times in July and August whenCalifornia needs imports the most. That is possible because thehydro producers are dropping up to 1,500 MW of power indirect-assistance loads with large industry users, principally thealuminum smelters, some of which have gone out of business, and thepower producers are agreeing to pay some agricultural and otherheavy users to not use electricity, something some of the potatofarmers already are viewing as a good economic deal for an interimperiod.

“The Northwest is a pretty significant variable,” said theenergy commission expert. “Given our choice, we’d rather see theNorthwest normal and California low. When California is low, hydrocan be manipulated so during the peak hours, we’re only about5% lowcompared to normal by not generating in the morning hours.

“The Northwest, on the other hand, whenever it is low, those aremegawatts we don’t get. So if they are a thousand megawatts low,those are a thousand megawatts we don’t get. Period!”

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