Power-hungry areas shop around for electricity
— -- Electricity has become such a precious commodity that states are fighting over who gets it.
In the latest dust-up, New Jersey regulators and consumer advocates are battling a plan by a state utility, Public Service Enterprise Group, to send power from a local plant to the more lucrative New York City market.
Federal regulators on Tuesday helped clear the way for the project, which critics say will increase electric rates and threaten the reliability of the power grid in New Jersey and the rest of the Mid-Atlantic.
Similar battles are playing out across the country as electricity demand surges and it becomes tougher to build power plants that spew global-warming gases, especially near population centers.
The tug of wars are also a product of the power industry's deregulation in many states. That has allowed utilities to sell power out of state to the highest bidder.
In other inter-region battles:
•Arizona regulators last year rejected a request by Southern California Edison to build a 230-mile transmission line from Arizona to California. The agency said the project would increase prices for Arizona consumers.
•Central New York state residents say a planned line to New York City would shrink their region's power surplus and increase electric prices about 3%.
The projects would mean net benefits for the grid and consumers. But they create "winners and losers," says Jone-Lin Wang of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "You're going to see more squabbles."
In New Jersey, PSEG wants to disconnect a 550-megawatt, natural-gas-fired plant in Ridgefield from the Mid-Atlantic grid and redirect its electricity over a new transmission line that would link to a Con Ed substation in Manhattan.
The project would help ease soaring power demand and electric prices in New York City.
And it would be a boon for PSEG. Its plant has been running at 35% capacity, and wholesale electric prices are about 30% higher in New York, says Skip Sindoni of PSEG Power, the PSEG unit that operates the plant. "We're responding to pricing signals," Sindoni says.
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