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Thursday, May 4, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Northeast's power shortage is grim despite U.S. surplus
The Associated Press
Government and industry officials say utilities in New England and New York may be forced to impose "browntouts," or brief periods of reduced voltage, if this summer brings a heat wave as intense as last year's. It is likely in other areas, meanwhile, is
A power glut in other areas, meanwhile, is creating problems of a different sort.
Public Service Co of New Mexico is drowning in surplus power. Earlier this month, state regulators are investing in power projects that are not needed today. The
utility, facing financial peril, stopped paying dividends on its stock.
"We still stand in a very precarious state." said Rick Brimmen, a public Service worker.
The disparate power supplies raises a question of growing urgency: Why can't regions with too much power send their surplus to areas with shortages?
The answer lies in the fragmented nature of America's electric power grid.
While it physically is possible to transfer power from one area to another — and it is done regularly between some Western states — there is no nationally integrated transmission system and no master plan for relieving regional bottlenecks.
Ashley Brown, a member of the Ohio Public Utilities Commission, called the nation's inability to balance its regional power needs "a travesty."
"If you came from Mars and looked at the New England states ... and at the Midwest, which we can say charitably is endowed with no shortage of capacity, and you saw it, I don't want to be a slave to another, there is no logical explanation for that," he told a meeting of state utility regulators.
Some officials said the Northeast's power squeeze might be even more severe in a few years as growing demand for electricity outstriped the region's stagnant supply.
"The near-term outlook for the electricity system in much of the Northeast is grim"
unless the Shoreham nuclear plant in New York and New Hampshire's Seabrook plant are activated, said Henson Moore, the deputy director of the plant. If the plants make their operation unlikely,
In the Pacific Northwest, the Bonneville Power Administration has so much excess electrical generating capacity that it is holding back on conservation measures that could save power equal to the yearly output of $1\frac{1}{2}$ nuclear power plants.
"It would just exacerbate our surpass." said Lee Johnson of the agency's Washington office.
plants, abandoned them for lack of power demand. Northwest consumers also are paying $14 million a year to keep two other nuclear plants in mothballs.
Electricity rates in much of the Northwest rose after a consortium of utilities, after several years of turbulence.
Despite the regional disparities, the United States enjoys a comfortable balance between electricity supply and demand. In 1967, the latest year for which such figures are available, the nation's utilities had the capacity to provide 23 percent more power than was needed
A comprehensive study of the electric power industry, published earlier this month by Arthur Anderson & Co. and the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said "no single measure exists" for measuring the nation's power transfer capability.
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