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OC firms clamor for more notification before rolling blackouts

Last week’s rolling blackouts renewed calls by Orange County manufacturers for better notification by Southern California Edison of future outages.

“It’s really senseless not to give notice to your customers,” said Mike Kanda, vice president of human resources for Textron Aerospace Fasteners in Santa Ana, a unit of Providence, R.I.-based Textron Inc.

Getting advance notice to shut down computer systems would “absolutely” help 500-employee Textron Aerospace, according to Kanda.

“If we had some assurance, we could turn on our generators” and switch to backup power in a “rational manner,” Kanda said.

Textron Aerospace also is an Edison interruptible customer, meaning it agrees to shut off power during serious shortage alerts in exchange for discounted rates.

“What additional notice would do is allow us to shut off equipment (and prevent) damage,” said Jody Callihan, director of operations for Santa Ana-based Astech Manufacturing Inc., a maker of sheet metal components for the aerospace industry. Astech employs 160 people.

“If we’re hit with virtually no warning, it’s difficult to turn off equipment,” Callihan said.

Astech, also an interruptible customer, hasn’t been hit with power outages this month, he said.

That could change. This summer, state officials expect more than a month’s worth of rolling blackout days as power demand surges.

The California Public Utilities Commission was expected to issue guidance on giving longer lead times to utility customers in case power must be shut off. The commission, however, still had not acted as of late last week.

Meanwhile, Edison maintains that the California Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s electrical grid, ties its hands on notification issues. The ISO often doesn’t give Edison a great deal of lead time before a rolling blackout, according to spokesman Steve Conroy.

Edison does, however, have a notification system in place for large industrial customers that use more than 300 kilowatt hours of energy during a billing period, Conroy said.

“We send out an auto-dialer message that says the ISO is predicting tight energy supplies and reserves.”

The message also suggests, among other things, conservation methods, Conroy said. But he noted that Edison and the ISO are looking into developing some form of pager system to notify business customers about potential rotating outages.

Meanwhile, Edison is planning to print the block numbers of business and residential customers on their bills starting next month as a way to help them determine whether they’re in an area subject to rolling blackouts, Conroy said. Information also will be available on Edison’s Web site, but Conroy emphasized that the utility won’t be making predictions.

If the Web site says blocks 20 to 25 could be affected at a given hour, Conroy said, firms in those blocks could prepare for possible blackouts.

Such a system may help a little, said Astech’s Callihan, who said he still would like to see a firm notification requirement.

“At least with a grid and block number, you know where you are in the pecking order” and can put together a best estimate, he said. “Right now, we’re completely in the dark. We don’t know the order.”

Astech’s wrestled with the energy issue for some time,Callihan estimated that the company’s costs associated with interruptions are “well over $100,000.” Like other companies, Astech was interrupted 13 times in January, he said.

“Grid notification will help; it’s better than nothing,” said Assemblyman John Campbell. The Irvine Republican has pushed unsuccessfully for a law that would require utility companies to give one-hour warnings in case of rolling blackouts.

Campbell saw his proposal die last week in an Assembly committee.

“It died once a month ago. This is the comeback,” he said.

Campbell believes that Assemblyman Roderick Wright, D-Los Angeles, bottled his proposal up in the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce because Wright, the panel’s chairman, was worried that early notice would discourage businesses from conserving energy.

“I don’t know how to craft (a bill) that would address Rod Wright’s concerns,” Campbell said, noting his proposal was unable to attract any votes from the California Assembly’s Democratic majority.

“All I can do is hope that the PUC does something,” said Campbell, who received advice from the Orange County Business Council, among others, while crafting his notification proposal. Representatives of the council and nine other business organizations recently visited Sacramento to lobby officials regarding notification concerns.

Rolling blackouts aren’t just a business inconvenience, according to Textron Aerospace’s Kanda.

“This whole problem is a health and welfare problem,” he said.

Kanda said he is concerned about what might happen, for instance, if people are trapped in elevators during rolling blackouts.

“Being trapped in an elevator, that is not rational,” he said. n

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