With temperatures going to highs in the 70s and 80s Tuesday,California started into a second day of rolling blackouts at 9:20a.m. PST, but cut them short in the afternoon as two key generatorswent back online and new supplies arrived from the Western AreaPower Administration (WAPA). At press time the early evening peakdemand was still in doubt, and it was possible blackouts wouldstart again.

“This is a lot better news than we had expected to have at thispoint,” said Cal-ISO spokesperson Patrick Dorinson, who noted thatprospects for avoiding blackouts today look “a little better.”

California grid operators were facing a supply situationslightly worse early Tuesday morning than they had on Monday whenstatewide rolling blackouts were imposed to cut demand by up to1,000 MW for up to six hours. The total energy reduction Tuesdaywas expected to be about 3,500 MWh, according to Jim Detmers,Cal-ISO’s vice president of operations.

Cal-ISO officials indicated that the current situation ofordering Stage Three alerts and rolling blackouts could be avoidedif the financial situation shutting down qualifying facility (QF)cogeneration and renewable energy plants could be resolved to bringback about 2,000 to 3,000 MW now offline. Pacific Gas &Electric made an offer late Tuesday to prepay QFs in order tojumpstart their operations. Another 12,000 MW was out Tuesday formaintenance.

Imports of power were down 800 MW compared to Monday and runningabout 4,600 MW. The state’s residents and businesses apparentlywere not responding with the same conservation action as they hadduring similar power emergencies in December and January, saidDorinson.

One of the two Mohave, NV, coal-fired power plant units takenout of service by a fire on Monday was expected to be back inservice by noon Tuesday, and an additional 375 MW unit in SouthernCalifornia was back later in the day. By the end of the week, theCalifornia grid operator expects a number of units composing the12,000 MW of idled generation capacity to be back online.

On the political front, the vocal Republican political minorityof California’s state Assembly Tuesday asked Gov. Gray Davis tofire the state regulatory commission president, replacing her with”an energy expert in which Californians could have completeconfidence.” The request unveiled in a Capitol press conference,brought a quick negative reaction from the state’s leading utilityconsumer group, TURN, who accused the GOP lawmakers of bringing”false accusations” against Loretta Lynch, president of theCalifornia Public Utilities Commission.

Claiming that last summer the CPUC had “a number ofopportunities to keep the energy problem from spiraling into acrisis,” Assembly GOP leader Bill Campbell accused Lynch and hercolleagues of “foot-dragging” that prevented the state’sinvestor-owned utilities from securing power supplies at $50/MWhinstead of at the current rate, which is five times or moregreater. “We have no confidence that Lynch will play a constructiverole in solving this energy crisis in the weeks and months ahead,”Campbell wrote.

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