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Southern California residents will have to get serious about energy conservation, particularly this summer, now that the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station has been permanently shut down.
Without that nuclear plant, which accounted for about 9% of the electricity generated in California, power supplies will be tight in parts of Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties for at least the next three summers, officials said. That means periods of reduced use of air conditioners, lights and swimming pool pumps for customers of Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co.
"Losing 2,250 megawatts from the system is a big deal, and if we ask for conservation, we need them to respond," said Steve Berberich, chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, which manages most of the state's long-distance electric transmission system from a control room in Folsom, east of Sacramento.
In the meantime, utilities, state energy officials and grid operators are looking for ways to compensate for San Onofre's loss.
Those fixes are likely to include pushing for greater energy efficiency in existing buildings and homes; constructing more state-of-the-art natural gas power plants; adding new long-distance transmission lines and speeding up the shift to wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable forms of energy.
Experts and consumer advocates hope the costs of the new infrastructure will...