Yellow alert response keeps lights on

Thursday, June 29, 2000 | 11:32 a.m.

How to save power

Nevada Power offers these tips residents can use to save electricity and avoid outages and other problems during hot months:

Local business and residential consumers saved enough electricity to light 25,000 homes for six hours Wednesday after Nevada Power issued a yellow alert because of a shortage of available power.

"We had no outages yesterday -- we managed to keep the lights on," Nevada Power President Steve Rigazio said today, noting that because the West is in the grasp of a searing heat wave, available power for sale on the open market will continue to be tight.

"The local response was tremendous, and we saved about 50 to 100 megawatts -- an amount that would light 25,000 homes during the peak use hours of 2 to 8 p.m."

As a result of those savings, Southern Nevada consumers used 3,900 megawatts Wednesday. On an average day about 2,000 megawatts are used.

Nevada Power officials asked big users, including casinos, to turn up the settings on their air-conditioners Wednesday. Many complied and also turned off unnecessary lights.

While downtown and Strip resorts did not turn off their outdoor lighting -- the trademark of the gambling oasis -- Rigazio said such a measure was not requested and is not necessary.

"Lighting is far more efficient than air-conditioning," he said. "The largest load on the system clearly is residential air-conditioning," which Rigazio said accounts for 60 percent of power used.

Complicating matters Wednesday was that four Nevada Power plants were down because of equipment problems. Three of the plants are back online today, Rigazio said.

Power plants also were down in other Western states on Wednesday.

Southern Nevada was not using as much power Wednesday as it did June 15, when an all-time record for usage was set, at 4,400 megawatts. No emergency was declared, but the rest of the West also was not sweltering under the conditions that existed Wednesday, when places like Portland, Ore., recorded unusual 90-degree-plus highs.

"Power was available on the open market on June 15," Rigazio said. "But you have to look at conditions in the entire West -- and yesterday it was hot, so the demand was up and everyone was competing to buy the same power."

Nevada Power generates about 2,000 megawatts daily from power plants it owns and co-owns in Southern Nevada and northern Arizona. It has contracted to buy another 1,700 over transmission lines. The remaining 300 or so megawatts have to be purchased daily on the open market.

When demand is high in populated places like California, it becomes more difficult for Southern Nevada to compete for that high-priced commodity, Rigazio said.

Another factor, Rigazio said, is that in the last four years, power companies have stopped buying generation plants, reducing reserves at companies like Nevada Power from 20 percent to 18 percent under normal conditions and to about 5 percent during tight times.

Combined with that is a rising demand in California, Arizona and Nevada -- up 12,000 megawatts per day while the supply has risen by just 2,000 megawatts per day.

Speculation among industry experts is that the Southwest could suffer up to three power blackouts this summer, each lasting up to three hours as hotter-than-normal temperatures boost demands for electricity.

Earlier this month Nevada Power transmission director Mark Shank told the Sun that the utility expects no trouble delivering on demand over the next three months, even though the company relies on power purchased from states in the region to fill the Las Vegas Valley's summer needs.

Rigazio stood by that statement despite Wednesday's close call. "We have plenty of transmission capacity," he said.

archive