• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Redlands Plant Powers Up

Posted on: Monday, 24 April 2006, 21:00 CDT

By Jim Steinberg, San Bernardino County Sun, Calif.

Apr. 22--REDLANDS -- As turbines whirled loudly, Southern California Edison on Friday dedicated the first new major power plant in the Los Angeles Basin in the past 30 years.

Edison's 1,054-megawatt Mountainview Power Plant will provide enough electricity to power 685,000 homes.

The $625 million, state-of-the art plant has a series of redundant systems that will make unforeseen plant shutdowns unlikely, said Ian Cuthbertson, plant manager.

The facility should help Southern California avoid brown-outs this summer, said Michael R. Peevey, president of the state Public Utilities Commission.

"Southern California looks in pretty good shape barring some weather anomaly where we get heat waves in both Northern and Southern California at the same time," he said.

Edison Chairman John Bryson said the Mountainview plant was needed in the rapidly growing San Bernardino-Riverside county region to help draw more power into the area.

"In the physics of electrical power transmission, you need to have power to draw power in from outside the area," Bryson said.

The Mountainview plant is one of the most efficient natural-gas plants in the West. The six Mountainview turbines can produce a kilowatt of electricity using 30 percent to 40 percent less natural gas than older power plants, Edision officials said.

In July 2003, Edison signed an option agreement with Sequoia Generating LLC, a subsidiary of InterGen, to acquire the abandoned Mountainview Power Company LLC.

Like many California power projects, Mountainview had fallen victim to the reluctance of financial institutions to finance new power plants because of market uncertainties following the state's 2000-2001 energy crisis.

Mountainview's 50-acre site had been the location of a much smaller fuel-oil and later natural gas-fired power plant Edison sold in 1998 to Thermo Ecoteck Corp. as part of the state's entry into deregulation.

Thermo Ecoteck ran into financial difficulty and then sold the plant to Sequoia Generating.

Cuthbertson said Edison has not determined what it will do with the surplus property.

"The old power plant will not be restarted," he said.

The California Energy Commission has reported that 1,707 megawatts of electricity will be added to Southern California during 2006, but 1,300 megawatts will disappear due to older plant retirement. The net increase of 400 megawatts of generation is not expected to keep pace with the demand increase, forecast to be 800 megawatts.

Power consumption in San Bernardino and Riverside counties is growing at about 4 percent a year twice the rate of other areas Edison serves.

In addition to Mountainview, Edison owns parts of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station near Phoenix.

The utility is also a sole owner of numerous hydroelectric plants. Combined, Edison produces about 30 percent of the power needed by its customers.

The remaining 70 percent is provided by independent power producers and marketers who compete for utility contracts in the open market.

-----

To see more of the San Bernardino County Sun, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sbsun.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, San Bernardino County Sun, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: San Bernardino County Sun

More News in this Category