POWER PLAYS.

• Author: GRAHAM, SANDY
• Position: Colorado not likely to face power crisis - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

13 NEW ELECTRIC PLANTS MAY DELIVER COLORADO FROM WEST COAST DILEMMA

California, the land of cool, may be any thing but that this summer.

For the past six months, the Golden State has coped with rolling blackouts, caused by utilities unable to generate or buy enough power to keep the lights on. The outlook for summer power is equally bleak.

Electricity is usually a given of modern life. We expect that we can light the room, crank up the computer, or set the fan whirring whenever we please.

But as California's power crisis has shown so starkly the power system can easily short-circuit when politicians, regulators and Mother Nature clash. Will Colorado follow California into the dark?

It's not likely say the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, the Colorado Office of Consumer Counsel, and Xcel Energy Inc. (NYSE: XEL), the state's largest electric utility serving 75 percent of Colorado's population.

"We think we have our eye on the ball and are avoiding the problems of California," says Cynthia Evans, Xcel's vice president for Colorado, Wyoming and Arizona. "We have done the planning that needs to be done to have enough generation over the next several years."

The Office of Consumer Counsel, which represents utility customers, agrees: "We are in better shape at the start of this summer than we were last summer -- and we made it through last summer," says Ken Reif, OCC director.

Keep those flashlights and candles on standby however.

Catastrophes like floods or wind-whipped fires that shut down several kinds of facilities at once -- large power plants or major transmission lines -- could disrupt power at any time. Evans calls such events "remote possibilities," but she also remembers the summer of 1998. Then, a transmission line overloaded and caught fire, forcing the metro area into emergency conservation measures, including about an hour of rolling blackouts.

And the power picture through 2005 hinges on timely approval and construction of critical new power supplies.

"We can't have someone slowing us down by years," Evans notes.

Still, Colorado seems to have avoided some of California's goofs and bad luck. The Golden State's troubles stem from a combination of regulatory and natural disasters. California has not built any generating facilities until recently, depending instead on out-of-state producers. Nor has it invested in new transmission lines to metropolitan areas. Industry deregulation in 1998 also added pressure on power markets by...