The North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) recently released its 2001 Summer Assessment. Some of the reports findings include:
- California will experience difficulties meeting its projected electricity demand this summer, and California electricity users will experience rotating blackouts, much more so than last summer or this past winter.
- Extreme drought conditions throughout the Pacific Northwest will affect the available output of hydroelectric resources.
- Although New England, New York City, and Texas should be closely watched this summer, generating capacity resources should be adequate to meet projected electricity demands in other areas of North America.
- There are concerns regarding north-to-south transmission transfer capability in the eastern portion of the United States, particularly east of the Mississippi River.
As a supplement to the report, NERC also published a 2001 Summer Special Assessment. This document is an in-depth, independent examination of the expected summer conditions in both California and the Pacific Northwest, and is based on interviews with experts from both the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) and the Northwest Power Pool (NWPP).
NERC assesses that CAISO will not have sufficient resources to meet expected demand this summer, and an estimated 260 hours of rotating blackouts are expected. NERC also expects that electric utilities in the NWPP will be able to serve all their firm electricity demands this summer, although NWPP will not have the ability to export the amounts of electricity it traditionally has to California or elsewhere.
The independent reports were prepared by NERCs Reliability Assessment Subcommittee and are available on NERCs Web site.
