California ISO: Challenging 2014 summer but reliability held firm

By Editors of Electric Light & Power/ POWERGRID International 

The California Independent System Operator Corporation grid operators managed reliable electricity delivery this summer through major wildfires, historic drought conditions and heat waves.

This summer’s highest level of demand reached 45,090 MW at 4:53 p.m. on September 15, 2014. This compares to 45,097 MW set on June 28, 2013 and 46,846 MW on August 13, 2012. The ISO’s highest peak on record is 50,270 MW on July 24, 2006.

On a local level, southern California set new demand records that underscore the impact from above normal — hot — temperatures recorded during the summer, especially along the coast. San Diego Gas & Electric area experienced record use on Monday, September 15 and then topped that on September 16 with an all-time record demand of 4,895 MW. The standing record peak was 4,684 MW set on September 27, 2010.


Southern California Edison area also experienced heavy loads reaching 23,266 MW on September 15. This was just shy of the area’s all-time peak of 23,388 MW set on September 7, 2011.

Meanwhile, one of the California ISO’s newest participating transmission owners, Valley Electric Association of Pahrump, Nevada, which serves a 6,800 square mile area south of Las Vegas and a sliver of California, set a new demand record of 120 MW on July 1, 2014.

Read more...

Decommissioning of San Onofre nuclear power plant to cost estimated $4.4 billion

SAN DIEGO (CNS) - Decommissioning of the idled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in northern San Diego County will cost an estimated $4.4 billion, according to a plan submitted Tuesday by majority owner Southern California Edison.

The plan was vetted in a series of public meetings. Another chance for the public to comment on the plan is scheduled for Monday at 4 p.m. at the San Juan Capistrano Community Center in that southern Orange County city.
The plan, summed up in three documents submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, envisions major decommissioning work to begin in early 2016. The documents include a decommissioning plan, a cost estimate and how to manage spent fuel.

Read more...

California: Ratepayers should bear part of San Onofre closure cost, utility says

SACRAMENTO — Preparing for months of battle over who should pay the estimated $4.1-billion cost of permanently shutting down the San Onofre nuclear power plant, which closed in June, Southern California Edison has launched a public relations campaign suggesting that ratepayers pick up part of the cost.

Who pays — ratepayers, stockholders, equipment manufacturers or insurers — is expected to be a long and thorny dispute before state and federal regulatory agencies as well as in the courts.

On the eve of legislative hearings Tuesday on the issue, the utility offered its 4.9 million customers a preview of its point of view in an advertisement published in the Los Angeles Times.

Closing the power plant is in the "best interests" of customers, it said, and ratepayers should be prepared to pitch in. The company discovered that hundreds of new steam generating tubes were wearing out, and it determined that keeping the plant open till the problem was resolved would be too costly.

"[I]f a utility asset must be retired before the end of its expected life, the utility recovers from customers its reasonable investment costs," Edison wrote.

Read More...

Without San Onofre Nuclear Plant, Southern Calfiornia Realized First Black Out of the Summer

The first real heat of the summer arrived last Friday, June 28, 2013.  As the citizens of Southern California arrived home they received their first real notice that San Onofre Nuclear Power plant was closed.  All traffic lights, businesses, and homes were dark from 6:00 p.m. until approximately 8:40 p.m. from the Cypress, CA area to the La Mirada, CA area.  Well over 100,000 homes were affected.

There was no news reporting the issue.  But, the residence experienced what could the beginning of a dark summer.

Layoffs Start at San Onofre, SoCal's Only Nuclear Power Plant

  An unpleasant aspect of shutting down Southern California's only nuclear power plant started Monday, as plant operator Southern California Edison (SCE) laid the groundwork to begin laying off about 600 plant workers.

The 2,200-megawatt plant on the San Diego County coast has been closed down since January 2012 after a leak of radioactive steam at one of the facility's two remaining reactors. SCE announced earlier this month that it would be decommissioning the plant.

SCE made the terminations official Monday by issuing a "workforce reduction notice" targeting 600 non-union positions. Those workers will lose their jobs within 60 days. All told about 500 additional positions will be shed as SCE begins the long decommissioning process at San Onofre, slashing the plant's workforce from 1,500 to a skeleton crew of 400.

Read More....

California: Edison Plans to Permanently Close San Onofre Nuclear Plant

Edison International (EIX) plans to permanently close its San Onofre nuclear plant in California, shut since January 2012 by a leak of radioactive water, because regulators may take too long to decide whether it can restart.

Southern California Edison, the utility unit that owns and operates the two reactors, will record after-tax costs of $300 million to $425 million this quarter as a result of shutting the reactor, Rosemead, California-based Edison said today in a statement.

Four commercial nuclear-power units have been permanently closed in the U.S. this year, the highest ever annual total, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission data. A glut of shale-fed natural gas and government-subsidized wind has upended power market dynamics and squeezed margins, making costly repairs uneconomical for some nuclear operators.

“The continuing uncertainty about when or if SONGS might return to service was not good for our customers, our investors, or the need to plan for our region’s long-term electricity needs, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Edison Ted Craver said in the statement.

The decision to shut the reactor came after the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ordered a hearing on the company’s plan to restart the least-damaged reactor at 70 percent of full power. A regulatory decision may be a year away, Edison said in today’s statement. Time and money are better spent on plants or power lines to replace San Onofre’s output, the company said.

Both reactors at the San Onofre plant, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) southeast of Long Beach were shut by the radioactive leak and discovery of unusual wear on tubes that transfer reactor heat to power-generating turbines. The plant had the capacity to generate 2,200 megawatts, enough to power 1.76 million average homes.

The announcement was made before regular trading began in New York. Edison rose 1.3 percent to $46.36 ... Read More...

SoCal Edison Responds To Boxer's Charges on San Onofre

by Chris Clarke

Southern California Edison (SCE) has responded to charges by Senator Barbara Boxer that the utility may have misled regulators about the scope of the steam generator replacement at its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, and the utility's characterization of the events leading to the replacement couldn't be more different from the Senator's.

In a series of statements this week, Senator Boxer said that a November 2004 letter from SCE Vice President Dwight E. Nunn to Akira Sawa of generator manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) offered evidence that SCE had later misled regulators at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which agency was charged with ensuring that changes to San Onofre wouldn't pose a public safety risk.
Those new steam generators, which were substantially larger than the ones they replaced, caused big problems for SCE and San Onofre. Premature wear in the generators' steam tubes apparently contributed to a leak of radioactive steam from one of the new generators in the plant's Unit 3 in January 2012. Unit 2 was shut down for maintenance at the time: both units have remained offline since.

The Boxer announcements come as SCE is waiting on a decision from the NRC over a proposed low-power restart of San Onofre's Unit 2, which the utility says will "prevent" the vibrations that caused the unexpected degree of tube wear.

In the letter, Nunn states that the new steam generators MHI was designing for San Onofre would not be a "like-for-like" replacement of the generators being retired. Boxer charged this week that SCE had subsequently described the steam generator replacement as a "like-for-like" replacement, a term of art that allows nuclear plant operators to avoid seeking a costly, time-consuming license amendment from the NRC.
But SCE says that the Senator has made a "fundamental error" in her reading of the history of the plant. Rather than certifying that San Onofre's replacement generators were a "like-for-like" replacement, says the utility, SCE sought and obtained a permit to replace the generators under a section of the NRC's rules covering Changes, tests and experiments in nuclear power plant design.

"In the November 2004 letter," said SCE in a statement released Tuesday, "SCE emphasized the care that would be needed during the design phase because of the differences between the new and old units. These differences -- which were intended to improve the overall performance of the new units -- were permitted under the NRC's 50.59 process, which allows changes to a nuclear facility if certain criteria are met. Contrary to Sen. Boxer's suggestion, Section 50.59 does not require that replacement equipment be 'like for like' or identical to the equipment being replaced."

Read More...

Costs for San Onofre nuclear power plant shutdown exceed $550 million, may be retired

Costs tied to the idling of California's San Onofre nuclear power plant have climbed to $553 million, while the majority owner raised the possibility Tuesday of retiring the plant if it can't get one reactor running later this year.

The plant between San Diego and Los Angeles has not produced electricity since January 2012, when a tiny radiation leak led to the discovery of unusual damage to hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water.

Edison International — the parent company of operator Southern California Edison — reported Tuesday that $109 million has been spent through March 31 on repairs and inspections, while $444 million was needed for replacement power.

SCE has asked federal regulators for permission to restart the Unit 2 reactor and run it for a five-month test period. Without that approval, Chairman Ted Craver told Wall Street analysts in a conference call that a decision on whether to retire one, or both, reactors might be made this year.

The company is facing a tangle of regulatory obstacles that include a Nuclear Regulatory Commission review of the restart plan and a separate state investigation into who should pay for the long-running shutdown — customers or shareholders.

Read More...

Feds deny group's request for San Onofre nuclear plant license amendment

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission turned down a request Thursday from an environmental group that wanted the operating license for the San Onofre nuclear plant amended.

Friends of the Earth said the license granted to Southern California Edison (SCE), which operates the plant, should have been amended when new generators were installed two years ago.

The group claims those new generators were a different type of design than what was in the original operating permit for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).

But the NRC turned down the petition.

Read More...

California Probes Shutdown of Edison Nuclear Plant

The California Public Utilities Commission voted to open an investigation into the causes and costs of the shutdown of Edison International (EIX)’s San Onofre nuclear power plant in Southern California. 

The commission voted 5-0 today to determine if customers should be charged for repairs and other expenses related to San Onofre, which has been shut since January after investigators found unusual wear on steam generator tubes. The commission will also determine the cost-effectiveness of repairing or replacing the generators.

The regulator “realizes the importance of the San Onofre nuclear plant to the state of California and the consequences of the problems with the plant for ratepayers and for all affected,” Michael R. Peevey, president of the commission, said in an e-mailed statement. “We will look very critically at the utilities’ financial responsibility for the prolonged outage and who should bear those costs.”

Without the nuclear plant, reliable power for San Diego and Los Angeles “is at risk” when demand is high, Neil Millar, an executive director of the California Independent System Operator, said in March. The shutdown has cost Rosemead, California-based Edison $165 million in inspection, repair and replacement power expenses through June 30, according to a July presentation to investors.

Read More...

Damaged San Onofre nuclear plant in Calif. submits restart plan for reactor

LOS ANGELES — The operator of California’s ailing San Onofre nuclear power plant proposed Thursday to restart one of its shuttered reactors after concluding it could be run safely despite damage to scores of tubes that carry radioactive water.

A plan to return even one reactor to service is a milestone for Southern California Edison, which has spent months unraveling what caused excessive tube vibration and friction inside the plant’s nearly new steam generators, then determining how it might be fixed.

But the plant is far from returning to robust operation.

Edison’s plan, which must be approved by federal regulators, calls for operating Unit 2 at reduced power for five months, then shutting it down for inspections. The outlook for the more heavily damaged Unit 3 is bleaker — no decision is expected on its future until at least next summer.

Meanwhile, the company is facing a state review of costs related to the long-running outage that could leave customers or shareholders with a huge bill for repairs and replacement power — a figure that had reached $165 million at midyear. The company did not update those figures Thursday.

Edison, a subsidiary of Edison International, filed its proposal with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is expected to take months to review the details. The NRC has said there is no timetable to restart the plant.

“The agency will not permit a restart unless and until we can conclude the reactor can be operated safely,” NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane said. “Our inspections and review will be painstaking, thorough and will not be rushed.”

Read More...

California grid plans alternate source for lost nuclear capacity

(Reuters) - The California Independent System Operator Corp (CAISO)said it will convert two power plants to compensate for electricity lost by the shut down of the San Onofre nuclear power plant in a bid to ensure enough power generation next summer.

Edison International's Southern California Edison (SCE)'s 2,150-megawatt San Onofre nuclear power station, or SONGS, has not produced electricity since Jan. 31 after a radiation leak was found in one of the two units.

It had supplied the state with some 8 percent of its power.

The grid operator will convert AES Corp 's Huntington Beach natural gas-fired units 3 and 4 into synchronous condensers, which act "somewhat like spinning flywheels, adjust to grid conditions by providing the voltage support, normally supplied by the nuclear plant", CAISO said in a statement.

The units had been taken out of retirement and restarted in May to offset power lost from San Onofre.
Those units would produce "megavars, instead of megawatts" and would "push megawatts through the grid, much like water pressure helps push water through a hose."

The units would have low environmental impact.

READ MORE...

San Onofre Power Plant To Empty Radioactive Fuel From One Reactor

SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. -- The operator of the San Onofre nuclear power plant is preparing to empty the radioactive fuel from one of its twin reactors, a federal official said Monday, another sign the plant won't be operating at full capacity anytime soon, if ever.

Tons of fuel inside the disabled Unit 3 reactor will be moved into storage in mid-September, Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector Gregory Warnick told The Associated Press on Monday.

The plant located between Los Angeles and San Diego has been shut down since January, after a break in a tube that carries radioactive water. Investigators later found unusual wear on scores of tubes inside the plant's four steam generators, and Southern California Edison has been trying for months to determine how to fix it.

Edison has previously said it's focusing on repairing the Unit 2 reactor, which had been taken offline earlier in January for maintenance, and that "the Unit 3 reactor will not be operating for some time."
Damage to the tubes in Unit 2 is less widespread, but there's no timetable for its possible restart.
Unit 3 "is clearly not the focus right now in terms of correcting the steam generator issues," said Warnick, the NRC's senior resident inspector at San Onofre. "Unit 3 is going to take more work."

Dave Lochbaum, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' nuclear safety project, said placing the radioactive fuel in storage puts the reactor in a condition "requiring the least amount of safety equipment to be operable, and therefore the fewest number of tests and inspections to be performed."
Coming shortly after Edison announced plans to cut its workforce, "reducing the scope of required work at the jobsite is a good thing to do before discharging workers," Lochbaum said.

READ MORE...

San Onofre layoffs raise questions about nuclear plant's future

More than six months after a leaking steam generator tube prompted a complete shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, Southern California Edison officials announced plans to lay off nearly one-third of its workforce, leading many to wonder if the troubled plant would ever fully reopen.

The company announced Monday a planned reduction of about 730 employees that will bring down staffing at the plant in northern San Diego County to 1,500. Details of the cuts will be worked out later this year, officials said.

Rochelle Becker, executive director of the watchdog group Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, said she believes the layoffs show Edison is being disingenuous about its plans for the plant.

"You can't lay off 700 people when you're trying to restart a plant — you hire more people when you have problems," Becker said. "I think the utility is being unfair to the ratepayers. I think they're being unfair to the workforce. I think if they're not going to operate this plant, they should come out and say they're not going to operate the plant."

On Jan. 31, one of the plant's steam generator tubes leaked, releasing a small amount of radioactive steam. The leak led to a complete shutdown of the plant and the eventual discovery of excessive wear on hundreds more tubes in the newly replaced steam generators.

Company officials have said that they hope to submit a restart plan for Unit 2 to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of the year, but have backed off from making any projections about if or when Unit 3 might return to service.

READ MORE...

Southern California Edison prepares for possible power outages

San Diego Gas and Electric officials warned residents in San Juan that meeting power demand during the upcoming months will be much tougher without the San Onofre Nuclear Plant that has been offline since January.

During Tuesday's City Council Meeting, Duane Cave, the external relations manager for SDG&E, said the loss of SONGS will negatively impact Southern California.

While the plant is operated by Southern California Edison, SDG&E owns a 20 percent stake in the plant that generated 16 percent of their company's power output when it was online.

"Without SONGS it is going to be very difficult," Cave said.

SDG&E provides power to San Diego County and South Orange County.

Cave said the months of August and September are the hottest in Southern California leading to late summer peak days in which the power grid is tested.

Peak demand is estimated at 46,352 megawatts statewide while the total instate generation of power is just 48,091 megawatts (without SONGS), according to SDG&E officials.

Read More...

Several days of heat and humidity come as SoCal Edison's San Onofre Nuclear Reactor Remains Offline.

High heat and increasing humidity are expected to continue to scald Southern California on Tuesday, bringing temperatures as high as 116 in the low deserts and possibly straining the region's energy supplies.

Both Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which supplies electricity to the city of L.A., have said that they believe they have access to enough energy to meet the region’s needs.

But a prolonged heat wave could challenge assumptions about how much energy is needed to keep Southern California homes and offices running smoothly. In a worst-case scenario, aging equipment could become overloaded, or - less likely - energy supplies could fall short.

With the massive San Onofre nuclear power plant likely to be shuttered for at least another several months, and aging infrastructure in DWP territory in need of upgrades, officials at both utilities are asking consumers to cut back their energy usage during the anticipated heat wave.

Read More...

 

Bill for damaged San Onofre nuclear power plant in California hits $165 million, and counting

LOS ANGELES - The tab for the long-running crisis at the San Onofre nuclear power plant in California has hit at least $165 million, and it would cost $25 million more to get one of the damaged reactors running at reduced power, officials said Tuesday.

Financial records released by Edison International — the parent company of operator Southern California Edison — provided a sober assessment of the troubles at the seaside plant, where malfunctioning steam generators damaged scores of tubes that carry radioactive water.

The plant has not produced power since January.

In a conference call with Wall Street analysts, Edison International Chairman Ted Craver left open the possibility that the heavily damaged generators in the Unit 3 reactor might be scrapped. It's also possible the plant will never return to its full output of electricity, unless the four generators are replaced.

The details were announced two days before the state Public Utilities Commission is expected to consider opening a probe of costs related to the long-running shutdown. If either of the reactors remains offline for nine months, Edison could face a separate commission review that would examine if customers should be paying for a plant that doesn't generate power, officials said.

Southern California Edison has piled up $48 million in inspection and repair costs through June 30 — a bill that is growing steadily. And $117 million has been needed so far to buy power to replace the electricity that the plant, located between San Diego and Los Angeles, would otherwise be producing.


READ MORE...

Edison Sees Possible Generation Unit Bankruptcy, Nuclear Probes

Edison International (EIX) (EIX), owner of California’s second-largest electric utility, said its money- losing, unregulated generation unit may be put into bankruptcy and disclosed more inquiries into its nuclear plant shutdown. 

The net loss at its Edison Mission Group widened to $110 million from $30 million a year ago on lower power prices and higher fuel costs, the Rosemead, California-based company said yesterday when reporting a 46 percent fall in second-quarter profit. The unit may have to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company is working to restructure about $3.7 billion in debt (0223076D) at Edison Mission, which has been hurt by a slump in power prices and rising environmental-compliance costs for its coal- fired power plants, Chief Executive Officer Ted Craver said on a conference call with investors. It’s in talks with bondholders to restructure debt and may have to reorganize its generation unit under new ownership if talks are unsuccessful, he said.

“I don’t think it’s all that surprising that the company is exploring various forms of reorganizing its generating unit, given its financial condition and the overall wholesale power market it is operating in,” Paul Patterson, a New York-based utility analyst for Glenrock Associates LLC, said yesterday in a telephone interview.
The earnings were issued after the close of regular trading in New York. Edison’s shares fell 24 cents, or 0.5 percent, in after-hours trading.

San Onofre Plant

Net income fell to $103 million, or 23 cents a share, from $191 million, or 54 cents, a year earlier. Excluding results from a coal plant that the company intends to transfer to General Electric Co. (GE) (GE), per-share profit was 32 cents, more than the 28-cent average of nine analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Read More...

The Dawn of the Great California Energy Crash

California, which imports over 25% of its electricity from out of state, is in no position to lose half (!) of its entire nuclear power capacity. But that’s exactly what happened earlier this year, when the San Onofre plant in north San Diego County unexpectedly went offline. The loss only worsens the broad energy deficit that has made California the most dependent state in the country on expensive, out-of-state power.

Its two nuclear plants — San Onofre in the south and Diablo Canyon on the central coast — together have provided more than 15% of the electricity supply that California generates for itself, before imports. But now there is the prospect that San Onofre will never reopen.

Will California now find that it must import as much as 30% of its power?

The problem of California’s energy dependency has been decades in the making. And it’s not just its electrical power balance that presents an ongoing challenge. California’s oil production peaked in 1985. And despite ongoing gains in energy efficiency via admirably wise regulation, the state’s population and aggregate energy consumption has completely overrun supply.

READ MORE...

Work needed to restart California nuclear plant: NRC report

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. nuclear inspection team has identified a number of issues that require further study before a damaged California nuclear plant can restart, according to a report issued on Thursday.

The two-reactor San Onofre Nuclear Station, located in Orange County, has been shut for more than five months due to the discovery of premature wear of steam generator tubes.

Located halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego, the nuclear station is critical to bolster the state grid and allow power to be imported to Southern California from outside the state. The California grid operator has warned that a prolonged shutdown of the plant increases the possibility of rolling outages over the summer months when power demand rises.

READ MORE...