Powerlink hearings postponed due to SDG&E errors

By Christy Scott
The Alpine Sun

     SAN DIEGO — A month-long set of hearings discussing the proposed Sunrise Powerlink has been postponed, after an admission by San Diego Gas & Electric that it made significant errors in estimating the benefits of its powerlink project.
     Steven Weissman, administrative law judge for the Public Utilities Commission, who has been overseeing the hearings, made the call last week, to postpone all hearings until July 30.
     The hearings, which began at the beginning of this month, have featured expert testimony in various categories regarding the powerlink project. They were scheduled to end this week.
     Earlier last week, SDG&E’s grid planning manager Jan Strack testified that he became aware of several significant errors in making the case for the Sunrise Powerlink to the PUC.
     According to SDG&E, mistakes involved misplaced decimal points, as well as other errors regarding the availability of coal-fired power plants in 2020.
     Strack said that the errors made him uncomfortable about the case SDG&E has presented, and called for the “top-to-bottom” review.
     SDG&E representatives said that the utility would correct the errors by the end of last week week, and review the entire economic case this week.
     When first proposed, in 2005, SDG&E estimated an annual energy cost savings of $447 million; that estimate was later lowered to $220 million. The report released by SDG&E, last Friday, drops the savings again, estimating $129 million in annual cost reductions to consumers.
     Michael Niggli, chief operating officer of SDG&E, said that the new estimate doesn’t change the overall benefit of the Sunrise project to the region.
     “The primary reasons we are looking at Sunrise are reliability and renewables,” Niggli said. “It has never been the economic benefits, even though it has twice the benefit of alternatives.”
     The newest numbers also reduce the benefits of all the project alternative routes.
     SDG&E’s preferred Sunrise Powerlink route stretches 150 miles from Imperial County across northern San Diego County, through Anza Borrego State Park, and would cost about $1.3 billion to construct. The towers along the route would be gigantic metal structures, measuring 125 feet high and more than 100 feet wide at their base.
     Other alternative routes that have been identified by the CPUC could plant conduit towers along a path that would skirt Cleveland National Forest land; but travel right through Boulevard, just north of Campo, Potrero, and then north through Descanso and Alpine, where it would be underground.
     The concession last week, or SDG&E errors, also prompted the Division of Ratepayer Advocates, a unit of the California Public Utilities Commission, to call for a dismissal of the case, which could derail the project.
     “This eviscerates their case,” said Joe Como, an attorney with the Division of Ratepayer Advocates. “You might get a witness saying there are small areas requiring change here and there… This time the witness says this upsets the whole apple cart.”
     Weissman deferred ruling on the dismissal motion last week, saying that the question is still on the table.
The group is scheduled to meet again on Thursday, July 26, to discuss how to proceed. The PUC has said it plans to issue a ruling on the Sunrise Powerlink by early next year.

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