Utility Lashes Back at Opponents

6/18/2008 - North County Times
By Dave Downey - Staff Writer

Final round of reports filed on Sunrise Powerlink

In a final round of reports filed with a state regulator about a proposed $1.5 billion power line that would cross North County, the San Diego region's electric utility fired back at opponents in asserting they exaggerated the project's wildfire threat.

And San Diego Gas & Electric Co. said opponents were wrong in saying imported electricity from a proposed desert solar farm would be more expensive than home-grown power from solar panels on roofs of local businesses and homes.

The 150-mile transmission line is being evaluated by the California Public Utilities Commission, which has been holding hearings and scheduling times for filing reports on the project's pros and cons. The latest ---- and last ---- window for filing reports opened May 30 and concluded Friday.

Incorporating all the information gleaned over the past two-plus years, the commission plans to issue a final environmental impact report soon.

That report will form the basis for a staff recommendation next month. Then the commission is expected to decide in August whether to license the project.

In a report filed Friday with the utilities commission, SDG&E took aim at a claim by environmental groups and a Ramona community group that Sunrise would substantially increase the chance more wind-fanned firestorms like those of 2003 and 2007 would break out.

"They all share one thing in common ---- they grossly overstate the risks associated with the 230 (kilovolt) and 500 (kilovolt) transmission lines proposed for Sunrise," the report stated.

SDG&E said power lines ignite a small proportion of wildfires ---- roughly 3 percent ---- and the vast majority are sparked by small wires that deliver power to neighborhoods. And the utility said far fewer than 1 percent of fires are caused by big transmission lines that carry huge amounts of electricity across great distances.

The utility said transmission lines are safer because their towers are designed to withstand Southern California's ferocious autumn Santa Ana winds, and their wires are so far apart they rarely snap against each other and shower sparks onto vegetation below.

However, the Mussey Grade Road Alliance, a Ramona group that opposes the project, stressed in a report of its own Friday that there is still cause for concern. Acknowledging that high-voltage lines ignite a small fraction of fires, the alliance said the important point is that the big wires still trigger wildfires.

That is troubling, the group stated, given that SDG&E "is proposing to build a very long transmission line that cuts through a very long swath of highly flammable vegetation and would be operated for 40 years."

The Ramona group also suggested power-line-ignited fires tend to be bigger than ones started other ways, primarily because it is the high winds that cause them to topple in the first place. Those same winds tend to spread fire rapidly.

Since 1960, 17 percent of all land burned by wildfire in San Diego County was the result of fires started by downed or snapping power lines, the group stated.

SDG&E is proposing to string 90 miles of 500-kilovolt wires and 60 miles of 230-kilovolt wires along a meandering path from El Centro to Carmel Valley. The transmission line would cross Anza-Borrego Desert State Park as well as Ranchita, Warner Springs, Santa Ysabel, Ramona and Rancho Penasquitos.

The project has sparked a firestorm of opposition from environmentalists and park visitors, as well as from residents of communities in its path. It has broad support in the business community.

Besides the fire issue, SDG&E's latest report also addressed disputes over the cost of solar power.

Bill Powers of San Diego, an activist and engineer from San Diego who has been fighting the project, asserted in an earlier report that a proposed Stirling Energy Systems solar plant in the Imperial Valley would deliver more costly electricity than would rooftop solar panels in San Diego County.

The utility said it would be the other way around.

At 900 megawatts, the desert project would be one of the world's largest solar plants. Stirling and SDG&E officials say the 300 megawatts provided by the project's first phase would be delivered to San Diego County over an existing power line along Interstate 8, and the rest of the electricity would come in over Sunrise.

Powers has contended that, because the project is employing an engine technology that is untested commercially, there is a strong likelihood it won't deliver.

SDG&E retorted that "there is no evidence that Stirling will fail." Even if it does, the utility said, there are other sources of green energy ---- solar, wind and geothermal ---- in the Imperial Valley that could be sent west along the Sunrise line.

Sunrise Powerlink would be designed to carry 1,000 megawatts. To place that into perspective, that's more than one-fifth of the electricity all of San Diego County uses on the hottest summer days, the periods of heaviest use.

SDG&E officials say Sunrise is needed to accommodate the region's population growth and residents' growing thirst for gadgets that use electricity, and to comply with a state mandate to deliver 20 percent of its power from green sources next decade.

SDG&E has warned that the region will run short of power as early as 2010.

However, Michael Shames, executive director for the advocacy group Utility Consumers' Action Network, said in a new filing that the utility's own records show that the region has enough to last until at least 2013.

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