On Sunday, I drew attention to a power industry-backed study that forecast widespread blackouts and brownouts within a few years unless more electric infrastructure is built. (See “When the Lights Go Out.”) Although I didn’t endorse the findings of the report, I did say that we need to take such fears seriously. We have much to lose if the dire warnings prove true.
Now comes news that those brownouts and blackouts may not be quite so imminent. The Wall Street Journal reported today that electric utility executives are scratching their heads over shrinking power use by households and businesses in pockets across the country, wondering if they reflect “a permanent shift in consumption” that will force the industry to revise expansion plans predicated on projected one- to two-percent annual growth.
The decline in consumption cannot be easily explained by weather conditions or even the recession. Duke Energy Corp., for instance, said its Midwest operations saw a 5.9 percent decline in electricity sales in the 3Q compared to same-quarter sales a year before. Said Duke CEO Jim Rogers: “Something fundamental is going on.”
That something fundamental might be called energy conservation. Consumers have embraced CFL light bulbs on a wide scale. I’ve installed them in about half the lights in my house, and my electric bills have been running lower. They do make a difference. Meanwhile, businesses are spending billions of dollars on building automation systems in projects driven by energy cost savings. The business where my wife works, Tridium, is enjoying a banner year this year, largely on the basis of its software platform used in building automation.
Dominion wasn’t quoted in the WSJ article, and Virginia may be an exception to the trend. But stuttering electric demand does give heft to the argument advanced by the Piedmont Environmental Council that energy conservation can make a difference here and now, and that Dominion’s projections of intermittent blackouts in Northern Virginia may be flawed. If the PEC is right, there may be no justification for the electric transmission line that Dominion wants so badly to build.
Virginians don’t follow the metrics of electricity consumption. There is no single benchmark price, like the cost of a barrel of oil, that we can readily latch on to. But we need to start paying attention. We have to thread a narrow, avoiding both overinvesting in electric infrastructure, which runs up our electric rates, and underinvesting, which exposes us to brownouts and blackouts. Either way, we have a lot riding on sound public policy.
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