About 85 percent of the growth in electricity demand in the last five years in the 11 states of the West has occurred outside California. Although companies in California have not constructed any major power plants in the last 10 years to meet the state's increasing needs, another point on which the state is criticized, neither has the Pacific Northwest, which has not finished a power plant since 1993. We haven't been building any new power plants either. Most experts agree, however, that the increased costs for power have been caused in part by California, which has been paying extremely high prices on the spot market for wholesale electricity to keep state officials from instituting rolling blackouts, a panicky buying strategy that drives up prices for everyone. California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona are joined together in one enormous power grid.
States are just imaginary lines on a map.
The grid is what is real. Precipitation is crucial because so much of the region relies on water to turn the turbines on the hundreds of hydroelectric dams across the West. While California scrambles to keep the lights on, the managers of the West's power grid are looking to the sky. And they do not like what they see. Mosey points out that a snowflake that falls in the upper Columbia River Basin in northeast Washington state is viewed by energy managers as a resource, as valuable to them as a dollar in the bank.