Solar has suddenly become much more important in Southern California because of the outage at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).
San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), California’s third-biggest investor-owned utility, could lose 15% to 20% loss of its base-load generating capacity.
“SDG&E, along with the California transmission system operator and Southern California Edison (SCE), are working together right now on contingency planning for the possibility that those two large units could be offline this summer,” said SDG&E spokesperson Jennifer Ramp.
SDG&E, Ramp added, will bring its new 500 kilovolt Sunrise Powerlink transmission line into service in early summer. Designed to deliver 1,000 megawatts of regional solar and wind that are not yet in service, Sunrise will carry extra fossil generation this summer – if it is available.
