It s analogous to a freeway that is three lanes that has to merge down to two lanes. You get a traffic jam there and you can t get as many cars through. Northern California s usual supply of winter power from the Pacific Northwest was then at reduced levels, worsening the problem. It s a key area for both the state and the Western region for transporting power and getting it where it needs to go, O Donley said. The entire Western grid needs major improvement, Eyre said.
Transmission lines are second.
No report is available on how much it would cost to bring the system up to par. There have not been significant improvements on the grid since talk of deregulation started in the early 1990s. As part of a 1996 federal law, the government forced transmission line owners to open their power lines to competition without being able to charge extra. The minute people felt they might not be compensated for building new transmission lines, they stopped building them, Eyre said. Although California s transmission line problems have hogged public attention, there are transmission bottlenecks all over the West.