Five ways to learn about the Sunrise Powerlink

If you're looking for information about the proposed "Sunrise Powerlink" transmission line, here are a few links to get you started.

News articles about the "Sunrise Powerlink" (two different sites with slightly different articles)

May 2007 to the present

December 2005 to the present

Overview of the "Sunrise Powerlink" situation

Energy alternatives to the "Sunrise Powerlink"

Ongoing commentary about the "Sunrise Powerlink" and other desert topics

The California Public Utility Commission's two webpages about the "Sunrise Powerlink" appear to be down right now, so can't post links for them.

If you're looking for information from SDG&E's point of view, you can easily find it on the Internet. As you surf, be aware that there are astroturf campaigns supporting the Powerlink on the Internet that have financial connections to SDG&E.

I'm taking an indefinite hiatus from blogging and don't know when I'll be posting regularly again.

Photo: Prairie coneflowers on a lovely summer day in South Dakota

Sunrise Powerlink decision delayed another three months

Yesterday, the Administrative Law Judge in the "Sunrise Powerlink" proceeding delayed the California Public Utilities Commission's decision whether to approve SDG&E's proposed transmission line by another three months.

Steven Weissman ruled that the earliest the Commissioners could vote to approve or disapprove the "Sunrise Powerlink" would be late November 2008. Their decision had previously been scheduled for August 2008.

You can read the judge's ruling for yourself here.

This morning's news coverage of the Judge's ruling:
San Diego Union Tribune
North County Times

The delay is needed so that portions of the project's draft environmental impact report can be re-circulated for public comment. Under state and federal law, new information about a possible wind energy project in Baja California (La Rumorosa) needs to be incorporated into the report.

Judge Weissman is being very careful to dot the i's and cross the t's because if the laws are not followed precisely, it makes it easier for this proceeding to wind up in court after the Commissioners make their decision.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has already said in an April 2008 letter that the La Rumorosa information should be incorporated into the environmental report because that wind project could potentially provide more electricity than the "Sunrise Powerlink," so must be fully evaluated as an alternative to the transmission line. The CPUC, whom Weissman works for, ignores the EPA at its peril. Read the EPA's letter here.

Judge Weissman also ordered the California Independent [sic] System Operator (the folks who control the electrical supply grid) to run some new numbers on projected economic benefits of the transmission line and alternatives to it. CAISO was also ordered to run new models of greenhouse gas emissions projected for the line and alternatives to it. These data runs will provide new information for his eventual recommendation on the case.

The greenhouse gas emissions data will be looked at carefully. The draft environmental impact statement said that greenhouse gases released during construction of the "Sunrise Powerlink" and through equipment leakage over its lifetime would be greater than greenhouse gases that could be avoided if the project carried renewable energy. This conclusion was a bombshell because it suggested that building big new transmission lines to carry renewable energy long distances would do more harm than good, at least when it comes to stopping global climate change. SDG&E and many other interests hated this.

The fight over greenhouse gas emissions numbers has significant implications for the huge boom in renewable energy that's currently underway, as well as the global climate change strategies of environmental groups.

The Sunrise Powerlink for beginners

If you're new to the "Sunrise Powerlink" transmission line issue, you can find great basic information at the Sierra Club's Smart Energy Solutions website.

Environmentally preferable alternatives to the "Sunrise Powerlink" are discussed in detail in this peer-reviewed report: San Diego Smart Energy 2020. (Link is for the Executive Summary, for the entire report, go here.

The best overview news article about the "Sunrise Powerlink" is this one. The best overview of how SDG&E is using renewable energy claims to sell the "Sunrise Powerlink" to the public is here.

The Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club have been making their case against the "Sunrise Powerlink" together at the California Public Utilities Commission. Their opening legal briefs explain what's wrong with the Powerlink from an environmental standpoint, including what's wrong with the renewable energy claims being used to sell the Powerlink to the public.

Legal brief 1

Legal brief 2

The Desert Protective Council's Desertblog provides many "Sunrise Powerlink" stories that are not covered by the mainstream media. (You may need to scroll down once you go to the link.)

(And if you're new to this blog and wondering why I'm writing about this, when I lived in California, I was one of the San Diego Sierra Club's early leaders on the issue. Because newcomers to the issue still visit this blog, I occasionally update it.)

Photo: These transmission lines connect the Imperial Valley electrical substation to power plants in Mexico. The "Sunrise Powerlink" would orginate from this same substation and could provide additional transmission capacity for fossil-fuel power generated south of the border.

Report from the midwest flooding

I see that some of the folks at Grist.org are asking why the media is not connecting the dots between this week's flooding in the midwest and global climate change.

It's all too obvious to the people living through those floods that something in nature has gone haywire. Nobody needs to say it on the news.

I was in northern Iowa this weekend, helping family move furniture and sandbag after the normally well-behaved creek behind them swallowed their backyard.

Flood waters from small creeks washed over roadway bridges that had been built to handle 100 year floods. And that was nothing compared to what the Winnebago and Cedar Rivers did. In some places, no one knew how high the flood crest really was because the gauge houses used to measure were underwater.

In the town I was in, no one I talked to could remember the water ever being that high before.

Even in people whose properties escaped unscathed, there is uneasiness. How soon will the rivers rise this high again? Will they go even higher next time?

Photo: Cheslea Creek, IA

If Boston can use solar power, why can't San Diego?

The next time someone tries to tell you that the place you live isn't sunny enough to produce solar energy, show them this photo.

It's a picture of my sister clowning around with a solar trash compactor outside Faneuil Hall in Boston. So many tourists come through there on the Freedom Trail that an ordinary trash can would be overwhelmed. Instead, this special trash can compacts the junk people toss into it, using the sun's rays for power.

If Boston can use solar power, why the heck are people in San Diego having to fight to get their utility company to consider solar?

What's next with the Sunrise Powerlink?

Thank you to everyone who attended the "Sunrise Powerlink" hearings in Borrego Springs yesterday. Attendance estimates were 650-700 people--a strong showing for a hearing that required San Diegans to drive more than an hour over the mountains into the desert on a Monday!

Four of the five Commissioners from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) were there: Peevey, Simon, Gruenich, and Bohn. The five CPUC Commissioners will be the ones voting whether to approve the "Sunrise Powerlink."

Desertblog covered the hearings live via Twitter.com. If that link didn't take you to Desertblog's Twitter posts, follow the directions at this Desertblog link to gain access. (Depending on when you go to Desertblog's Twitter page, you may have to scroll down to see the "tweets" from the hearings.)

What next with the "Sunrise Powerlink"? Desertblog will have updates as they occur.

If you're looking for basic information about the "Sunrise Powerlink" and better alternatives to it, check out the San Diego Smart Energy Solutions campaign.

Photo: Sempra Energy owns SDG&E, the utility company proposing the "Sunrise Powerlink."

New Alert on May 12 Sunrise Powerlink Hearings

Update (5/12/08): Provided that the cell phone service works as advertised, you'll be able to read real-time updates from today's "Sunrise Powerlink" hearings by following Desertblog at Twitter.com. Read this Desertblog post for details of how to do it.

Original Post: The Desert Protective Council has a new Sunrise Powerlink alert up on its website. It has full details on the May 12 California Public Utilities Commission hearings in Borrego Springs, including talking points, tips for attending the hearings, links to maps, and flyers about mobilization meetings the week before the hearings.

If you absolutely can't make the hearings in person, you'll find both "comment letter talking points" and a pre-written form letter to the Public Utilities Commission. Write your letter, or download and sign the form letter, then send it to the Desert Protective Council (contact info on the alert) and it will be handed in at the May 12 hearing.

The Anza-Borrego Foundation also has a protest letter, focusing on Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, on its Sunrise Powerlink page, which you can download and send to ABF.

To avoid duplication, please send comment letters to only one organization. Delivery deadline for both letters is May 9.

If you know of any other May 12 alerts or comment letters available on the web, please post them in a comment.

Stirling Energy Systems and the Sunrise Powerlink

Stirling Energy Systems has announced a $100 million investment deal with NTR of Ireland. Right now the news coverage is pretty skimpy, so I expect to be posting more later this week. (Update 4/18/08: Nope, I'm taking a break from posting. But you can read the coverage at Google News.)

(Original Post:) Here are some thoughts about SES from David Hogan at the Center for Biological Diversity:

Stirling Energy Systems Inc. pops up occasionally with a press release touting their ethereal desert project as ready for prime time, and the project forms nearly the entire basis for SDG&E’s claims that the Sunrise Powerlink will deliver renewable energy.

Public relations aside, consider that no hard facts supporting the viability of the Stirling Solar project made it into the official record of the California Public Utilities Commission proceeding on the Sunrise Powerlink when the Stirling project was addressed last summer. In contrast, consider the testimony of Barry Butler, a PhD expert in Stirling solar technology who concluded:

“Major reliability problems with the SAIC Stirling engine included hydrogen leakage through joints and seals, internal engine seal leakage, swashplate actuator stalls, and heater head braze joint hydrogen leaks. That means that on average once every 40 hours a problem of some type required shut down and maintenance. Nearly continuous maintenance was necessary to keep the system “available” to generate electricity. … The commercial viability of the Stirling system is unproven at this time. …there is no possible way that dish/Stirling solar can move from high cost prototype models with substantive reliability concerns to large-scale production of high reliability low-cost commercial models by 2008 and full operation of a 12,000 dish, 300 MW array by the end of 2010.”

Neither Stirling Energy Systems Inc. nor SDG&E offered any expert witnesses to testify in support of the technical viability of the project and Stirling refused to release technical information during discovery. SDG&E officials testified that they did not screen the viability of the Stirling Solar project and that SDG&E will not guarantee that the Powerlink will carry renewable energy from this or any other source. Stirling Energy Systems has yet to file for required permits with the state or federal government to build the project despite a 2010 contract deadline with SDG&E. So it’s no surprise that SDG&E has reported to investors that it is unlikely to meet a state deadline the same year to deliver 20% of it’s energy as renewables.

So the Stirling project is desert mirage, the dust cloud behind which hides SDG&E’s massive Baja California fossil fuel infrastructure just itching to get to market in Los Angeles via the Sunrise Powerlink."

It's spring when laundry blooms on lines across the City

My household was part of a great wave of folks hanging laundry outdoors today in Minneapolis. It was finally warm enough (45 degrees) and sunny enough.

It is such a relief when I can bid good-bye to the gas dryer for six months.

Why can't SDG&E provide solar like SCE?

Could San Diego have a solar "power plant" on commercial rooftops, like the one Southern California Edison is building? Dean Calbreath of the San Diego Union Tribune explores the question in this informative article.

And yep, SDG&E is still sticking to its lame "we-can't-do-what-SCE-did-because-San-Diego-doesn't-have-enough-warehouses" argument.

Rooftop solar is just part of the San Diego Smart Energy 2020 report, which lays out alternatives to SDG&E's proposed "Sunrise Powerlink" transmission line.

Walking the Sunrise Powerlink route

Video from two years ago, when I walked 78 miles of the proposed route for the "Sunrise Powerlink" transmission line. I'll warn you, not much happens in the video. But it's a good view of the Ocotillo Wells area and some of the existing small power poles, which are much smaller than what SDG&E intends to build.



This footage is from outside Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, which is much prettier and in better condition than the area I'm walking through here. This was the hardest day of my walk. I was exhausted from the previous day, when I walked for four hours in a sandstorm. By the end of that day, the mirror finish had been sandblasted off my sunglasses.

During the sandstorm, the small power lines made a singing sound, but they were silent the rest of my trip. This is very different from the loud buzzing and crackling the existing 500 kV line made. I walked for about two days next to the existing 500 kV line, and I could never forget it was there. I could still hear it at night over the noise of the Plaster City factory.

Video courtesy of GeoffreyHawk. Thank you!

No place deserves to be a sacrifice zone

Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of the day I started walking in the desert, along 78 miles of what was then the preferred route for SDG&E's proposed "Sunrise Powerlink" transmission line.

It's also the deadline for sending in your comments about the draft environmental report for the "Sunrise Powerlink."

I've been reading a book from the 70's, The Rape of the Great Plains: Northwest America, Cattle and Coal. It tells a story mostly about Montana, and small rural communities struggling to stop coal strip mines and transmission lines. They knew their area was being targeted as "sacrifice zone" for energy, and they didn't like it.

Some folks in the California desert know that their communities are now being targeted as a "sacrifice zone," this time for giant renewable energy facilities, and they don't like it either.

It's sad that almost four decades after the battles on the Great Plains, we still don't have energy that's both clean and respectful of local communities. It's not like it can't be done. Southern California Edison recently announced a solar project that shows one possibility.

Graphic credit: Jim Lydick

No place for a power line

Video footage of the little-known southeastern San Diego County mountains that are a possible route for SDG&E's boondoggle "Sunrise Powerlink."



Meanwhile, SDG&E doesn't want to follow the example of Southern California Edison and provide rooftop solar energy to San Diego because --wait for it-- San Diego allegedly doesn't have enough concentration of warehouses. Do any of the executives at SDG&E realize how stupid the company sounds when they and their PR reps say this?

Video Credit: Cindy Buxton

Sunrise Powerlink meetings you should know about

From Desertblog:

Opponents face off next week in meetings that will help decide the fate of the Sunrise Powerlink, SDG&E’s unnecessary and destructive $7 billion boondoggle (that’s the lifetime cost, folks, not just the construction cost).

Read more about these meetings here. They begin on April 7, 2008, with an important opportunity on April 11.

If you're coming to this website looking for basic information about the proposed "Sunrise Powerlink" and alternatives to it, go here.

Photo: Transmission lines that link the Imperial Valley substation to Mexican gas-fired power plants. All proposed routes for the "Sunrise Powerlink" would begin at this substation, making it easy for the "Sunrise Powerlink" to bring Mexican electricity to California. Electricity imported from Mexico = exported American jobs.

Are you paying for SDG&E's Sunrise Powerlink ads?

Check out what Desertblog has to say about the $45,000 misinformation campaign to promote SDG&E's boondoggle "Sunrise Powerlink" transmission line project.

Desertblog is posting much more often than I can about the "Sunrise Powerlink." I highly recommend subscribing to it (it's free!) so you can automatically get new articles as they are published.

SDG&E has shown a great lack of integrity regarding the "Sunrise Powerlink." In the case of this disinformation campaign, SDG&E doesn't even have the guts to deceive and mislead using its own name. Instead, it is using an astroturf "community alliance" to do its dirty work.

The $45,000 comes from SDG&E, channeled through the fake "community alliance." That means if SDG&E is your utility, watch out! According to Michael Shames, Executive Director of Utility Consumers' Action Network, SDG&E's customers are paying for the ads.

P.S. Those of you interested in SDG&E's PR campaigns may be interested in this article, which briefly discusses the 1980s, when SDG&E's approval rating was only 15%. Is the company headed back to those days?