Posted on 08/19/2003 1:07:20 PM PDT by bedolido
WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 — Five days after the power failure that blacked out all or part of eight states and two Canadian provinces, President Bush said today that Congressional Republicans had assured him that a conference committee would begin work within 20 days on a final package of energy legislation.
Speaking near his vacation ranch in Crawford, Tex., Mr. Bush told reporters that he spoke by telephone Monday night with two crucial Republican lawmakers on energy issues — Sen. Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico and Representative Billy Tauzin of Louisiana — and that they had assured him they could reach an agreement on the hard-fought energy legislation.
The president said he was "very confident" that the legislation would include mandatory standards on reliability, including penalties if electricity suppliers failed to reliably provide power.
"What that means is, that companies transmitting energy will have to have strong reliability measures in place, otherwise there will be a consequence for them," he said. "There will be incentives in the new bill to encourage investment in energy infrastructure."
He added: "I have been calling for an energy bill for a long time. And now is the time for the Congress to move and get something done."
Mr. Bush, who indicated his preference for the House version of the legislation, would not say whether he wanted the bill — a controversial package that has been lurching slowly through Congress — to include any other special provisions geared to preventing blackouts, though he said he was confident that House and Senate negotiators could reach overall agreement.
Republican and Democratic legislators have been less sanguine about this, however. The Democrats have said the administration should strip the more controversial provisions from the package, including one to permit oil drilling in sensitive Alaska wilderness areas. Republicans say the blackouts, with their severe economic disruptions, underline the need for a broader approach.
President Bush also indicated that while he believed that new individual tax cuts were not needed now to invigorate the economy, corporate tax cuts might make sense.
"I believe the tax relief packages we have in place are doing their job," he said. "But I'm a flexible person."
Mr. Bush also noted that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is to meet with his Canadian counterpart on Wednesday to discuss a joint inquiry into the blackout, though he allowed that "I don't know how long it's going to take to find out what went wrong."
Their Holy Grail.
And on a different subject, mandatory reliability standards will simply kill California, which has been counting on neighboring states for their spinning reserves (without paying for it).
We need new laws to capture that additional 0.003%!
:-) You're probably out of luck. Customers all over (hopefully through fees and not taxes) will be paying to upgrade the grids. But if you're in the country with those dreaded above ground electric lines, you're not going to see much improvement.
The only time I've been happy to see new development is when one huge project required burying an electrical line which had previously been on a pole between the hot drinking spots and a bedroom suburb. Now I don't have to put coffee in a vacuum bottle on Sat night. :-)
That's easy. Tell them to f themselves, and we have the power to fix the problem and intend to do so ASAP.
I find it pretty sad when people who have as reliable electrical service as they do in NYC do so much complaining. After an ice storm I was without power for 7 days and I didn't blame the president. Out here in the country all the lines are above ground..because that's all we can afford. I have a generator, a cheap one, that will power the well, keep the refigerator running, etc. Maybe it's time these fancy pants out East gave some thought to being a little more self sufficient.
I dunno. If I lived in NYC, I'd probably be whining a lot. I have a friend who lives in an efficiency apt (that's one room) on the 26th floor. You can't keep a lot of stuff in one room - certainly not a generator, and not even much food.
I'd have a hard time choosing between spending even 24 hrs. in one dark, stuffy room with no food except dry cereal and walking down (and up again) 26 stories. I'm sure I'd whine no matter which choice I made. :-)
You wouldn't want to do that. Lines losses (even at extremely high voltages) will kill you. What you want to do is take power from your nearest neighbor, if he can give it to you, and then let him pull in from his neighbors what he needs to make up whatever deficit his lending you power caused, and so on, until you've damped out the perturbation. The trick is to bring in the additional demand in such a way that you don't take down the neighboring grid by demanding more than they can provide. Imagine plucking a spider web. The force is transferred through the different strands. Everyone feels it but hopefully nothing breaks.
That was the problem this time. The load couldn't be transferred, so it was shed. The neighboring grids had to be isolated or they'd be taken down by the too-great demand. What policymakers should do is put incentives in place that make the local grids more reliable, both for generating capacity (number one) and the ability to share load reliably.
Yes, I understand that. I was trying to be brief. The point was that we have three isolated grids - they can't transfer power between them. The companies working within each grid can exchange power, but when one grid is in total trouble (like the West last year and the NE just recently) the others can't help.
We'd be better off with country-wide interconnections.
A nationwide interconnect would be useful for those areas where instability crosses regional grid boundaries. Sufficient and reliable local capacity would also be helpful. I'm not talking about solar panels on a rooftop or a windmill here and there, but robust and reliable baseload plants that can keep an adequate spinning reserve on a more localized level. Right now California counts on out-of-state spinning reserve to keep their margins up to par. They're literally flying on a wing and a prayer.
Of course, if you build in adequate reserves, the enviro-whackos come after you, saying you're overbuilding capacity. Well, yeah, you do, but if you want to bring up reliability, that's one thing you need to do.
The nationwide interconnect would also be useful in cases where so much of the grid has been affected that what is left just cannot supply the demand. I really don't see any downside to having a nationwide connection, except the complaints of the environmentalists and NIMBYs.
Reliable local capacity would be a good thing as well, but the problem with that is the same environmentalists and NIMBYs.
Reliable electric power has done so much for the quality of life and the wealth of the US that I can't imagine why some people fight upgrades. Without it, Manhattan would be a slum of 5 story tenements, and no one would be able to live in vast parts of the Southwest. OK, maybe that's a little over the top, but not by much.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.