BY ADAM ASHTON, The Sacramento Bee
(EXCERPT)
In three years, California’s largest utilities could be slashing their use of fossil fuels by swapping homegrown solar energy for Rocky Mountain wind power in a sprawling Western electricity grid.
Or a newly expanded grid could provide a profitable market to revive out-of-state coal plants that would otherwise face a harder time complying with California’s aggressive greenhouse-gas-reduction efforts.
Those contrasting scenarios are driving debate as the state’s energy and air-quality regulators finish studies on a proposal to merge the grid for California’s biggest power companies – Pacific Gas and Electric Co., San Diego Gas and Electric, and Southern California Edison – with another privately run entity that serves 1.8 million customers across the West. The combined grid would serve about 32 million customers.
California lawmakers set the stage for the merger last year when they passed SB 350, the law that calls for utilities to generate half of their power from renewable sources by 2030.
This month, lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown could decide whether to commit to linking California’s main grid, known as the Independent System Operator, with one managed in six states by PacifiCorp.
Here’s a look at what’s motivating the proposal and some of the questions that are leading smaller utilities to ask the Brown administration to slow down the merger.