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Morning News

Utilities Warning Californians to Conserve Electricity

Aired January 12, 2001 - 10:58 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We are going to start this hour on the West Coast. They have big problems there: a worsening power crisis. In his quest for a solution, Governor Gray Davis plans to meet today with his counterparts from Oregon and Washington state. For now, though, the problem of skyrocketing costs, and demand is still very high. In fact, this hour is a critical time. It's a time that millions of Californians start their day.

Our Greg Lefevre is in San Francisco. He has already started his. Greg, you've done the things that -- people are using power. You've been at home and started your day, and you've also been to work.

GREG LEFEVRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, what we're doing here in California is we're watching that power very carefully and just this second got off the phone with Pacific Gas & Electric. They say so far so good this morning, but boy, life is really on edge. They're saying to folks at home, turn off that extra light. If you're going to the office this morning, run maybe one coffee maker, not two, check the unused rooms, keep those lights off. Right now, we're at a stage 2 electrical emergency here in California. That means we've only got about a 5 percent margin, and that's not very much when you consider that homes and businesses are both online right now here this morning in California.

Now, Friday usually is a slightly lower-use day in California. A lot of folks have their work week going from Sunday through Thursday, and that helps a great deal here in California. And the folks here at Pacific Gas & Electric and the switching station behind me are counting on that.

Also, PG&E says that some of the power plants that were offline yesterday are beginning to come back online this morning. Yesterday, California lost about a third of its electrical generating capacity. That's an awful lot. It had to import a lot of energy from outside the state. Some of those plants are coming back online.

Most notably, we understand that Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant may be able to get back online today. The heavy storm here in California yesterday broke loose giant kelp beds and debris that clogged the intake cooling valves, the cooling valves at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. That caused that plant to go down to 20 percent of its capacity, which really affected the power situation around Central California. Also, the weather in California is easing up a great deal. Yesterday was heavy, stormy weather all across California. It's still raining in parts of Southern California today. But the temperatures are coming up a little bit.

The independent service operator, the electrical switching system here in California, predicts that the emergency that we had yesterday, the stage 3, may not be repeated today.

But again, we are currently at stage 2 with only a 5 percent margin here in California, and that's not very much. Back to you in Atlanta.

KAGAN: OK. All right, thank you very much, Greg Lefevre in San Francisco.

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