Blackouts threaten entire US West as summer heat arrives
Naureen Malik, David R Baker and Mark Chediak
May 15, 2021 – 6.10am
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First they struck California, then Texas. Now blackouts are threatening the entire US West as nearly a dozen states head into summer with too little electricity.
From New Mexico to Washington, power grids are being strained by forces years in the making some of them fuelled by climate change, others by the fight against it. If a heat wave strikes the whole region at once, the rolling outages that darkened Southern California and Silicon Valley last August will have been previews, not flukes.
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Print article First they struck California, then Texas. Now blackouts are threatening the entire U.S. West as nearly a dozen states head into summer with too little electricity. From New Mexico to Washington, power grids are being strained by forces years in the making - some of them fueled by climate change, others by the fight against it. If a heat wave strikes the whole region at once, the rolling outages that darkened Southern California and Silicon Valley last August will have been previews, not flukes. “It’s really the same case in different parts of the West,” said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive officer of the California Independent System Operator, which runs most of the state’s grid. “It’s revealed competition for scarce resources that we haven’t seen for some time.”
From New Mexico to Washington, power grids are being strained by forces years in the making — some of them fueled by climate change, others by the fight against it.
Electric
E-1 – Electric Transmission Incentives Policy Under Section 219 of the Federal Power Act (Docket No. RM20-10-000). On March 20, 2020, the Commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) relating to electric transmission incentives policy pursuant to the Federal Power Act (FPA). In the NOPR, the Commission furnished proposed revisions to transmission planning and cost allocation processes following significant developments in the sector, reflecting a potential new focus on reliability and economic benefits rather than the current risks and rewards approach associated with specific projects. Further, the NOPR acknowledged policy shifts in the fifteen years following Order No. 679, which codified an approach to evaluate requests for incentives made by transmission owners and operators, as well as Order No. 1000 and the 2012 Policy Statement on transmission incentives applications. Namely, the NOPR proposed to: offer public utilities an return on equity (ROE) incenti