Southern California Edison
Encyclopedia
Southern California Edison (or SCE Corp), the largest subsidiary of Edison International
, is the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California
, USA. It provides 14 million people with electricity. However, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
, San Diego Gas & Electric
, Imperial Irrigation District
, and some smaller municipal utilities serve substantial portions of the southern California territory. The northern part of the state is generally served by the Pacific Gas & Electric Company of San Francisco.
Southern California Edison (SCE) still owns all of its electrical transmission
facilities and equipment, but the deregulation
of California's electricity market
forced the company to sell many of its power plants, though some were probably sold by choice. In California, SCE retained only its hydroelectric plants, totaling about 1,200 MW, and its 75% share of the 2,150-MW San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station
. The utility lost all of its natural gas
-fired plants, which provided most of its electrical generation. The large, aging plants were bought by out-of-state companies such as Mirant
and Reliant Energy
, which allegedly used them to manipulate the California energy market. However, SCE still owns about half of the 1,580-MW coal
-fired Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nevada
, which supplied electricity to California, Nevada
, and Arizona
. Mohave closed in December 2005, amid concerns regarding water rights and coal supplies.
Southern California Edison's power grid is linked to PG&E's by the Path 26
wires that generally follow Interstate 5
over Tejon Pass
. The interconnection takes place at a massive substation at Buttonwillow
. PG&E's and WAPA
's Path 15
and Path 66
, respectively, from Buttonwillow north eventually connect to BPA
's grid in the Pacific Northwest
. There are several other interconnections with local and out-of-state utilities, such as Path 46
.
In addition, SCE operates a regulated gas and water utility. SCE is the sole commercial provider of natural gas and fresh water service to Santa Catalina Island
, including the city of Avalon, California
. SCE operates the utilities under the names of Catalina Island Gas Company and Catalina Island Water Company.
to purchase solar thermal power up to 726 MW.
Southern California Edison also entered into a contract with Stirling Energy Systems
to buy electricity from a 500 megawatt, 4,600 acre (19 km²), solar power plant which was due to open in 2009. The purchase was canceled in late 2010, as changes in technology reduced the cost of photovoltaic-based solar power to below that of solar Stirling generated power. This would have been the first commercial application of the dish stirling system. A different technology from the more familiar solar panel, the dish concentrates solar energy by the use of reflective surfaces and by the use of the Stirling heat engine to convert the heat into electricity.
In 2006, Southern California Edison planned to secure 1,500 megawatts or more of power generated from new projects to be built in the Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm
area. The contract, which more than doubles SCE's wind energy portfolio, envisions more than 50 square miles (129.5 km²) of wind parks in the Tehachapi region, which is triple the size of any existing U.S. wind farm.
In March 2008, Southern California Edison announced a $875 million project to build a network of 250 megawatts of photovoltaic solar power generation, making it the biggest solar cell project in the nation. The photovoltaic cells will cover 65000000 square feet (6,038,697.6 m²) of rooftops in southern California and will generate enough power to serve 162,000 homes.
Southern California Edison received a 100% rating on the Corporate Equality Index released by the Human Rights Campaign
starting in 2004, the third year of the report.
Dr. John Jurewitz served as Director of Regulatory Policy for Southern California Edison for 15 years until his retirement in July 2007. His major areas of research are in oil, gas, and electricity policy and greenhouse gas
regulation. He has testified and participated in government-sponsored proceedings addressing electric industry restructuring and energy policy
at the state, federal, and international levels.
Edison International
Edison International is a public utility holding company based in Rosemead, California. Its subsidiaries include Southern California Edison, and un-regulated non-utility assets Edison Mission Energy and Midwest Generation, power producers, and Edison Capital...
, is the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
, USA. It provides 14 million people with electricity. However, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is the largest municipal utility in the United States, serving over four million residents. It was founded in 1902 to supply water and electricity to residents and businesses in Los Angeles and surrounding communities...
, San Diego Gas & Electric
San Diego Gas & Electric
San Diego Gas & Electric is the utility that provides natural gas and electricity to San Diego County and southern Orange County in southwestern California, United States...
, Imperial Irrigation District
Imperial Irrigation District
The Imperial Irrigation District was formed in 1911 under the California Irrigation District Act to acquire the properties of the bankrupt California Development Company and its Mexican subsidiary. The IID had acquired 13 mutual water companies, which had developed and operated distribution canals...
, and some smaller municipal utilities serve substantial portions of the southern California territory. The northern part of the state is generally served by the Pacific Gas & Electric Company of San Francisco.
Southern California Edison (SCE) still owns all of its electrical transmission
Electric power transmission
Electric-power transmission is the bulk transfer of electrical energy, from generating power plants to Electrical substations located near demand centers...
facilities and equipment, but the deregulation
Deregulation
Deregulation is the removal or simplification of government rules and regulations that constrain the operation of market forces.Deregulation is the removal or simplification of government rules and regulations that constrain the operation of market forces.Deregulation is the removal or...
of California's electricity market
Electricity market
In economic terms, electricity is a commodity capable of being bought, sold and traded. An electricity market is a system for effecting purchases, through bids to buy; sales, through offers to sell; and short-term trades, generally in the form of financial or obligation swaps. Bids and offers use...
forced the company to sell many of its power plants, though some were probably sold by choice. In California, SCE retained only its hydroelectric plants, totaling about 1,200 MW, and its 75% share of the 2,150-MW San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station
San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station
The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is a nuclear power plant located on the Pacific coast of California. The site is in the northwestern corner of San Diego County, south of San Clemente, and surrounded by the San Onofre State Park and next to the I-5 Highway.Unit 1 is no longer in service...
. The utility lost all of its natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
-fired plants, which provided most of its electrical generation. The large, aging plants were bought by out-of-state companies such as Mirant
Mirant
Mirant Corporation, an Atlanta-based energy company, produces and sells electricity in the United States. The company was spun off from its former parent, Southern Company, on April 2, 2001...
and Reliant Energy
Reliant Energy
RRI Energy, Inc. , based in Houston, Texas, United States, was an energy company that provided electricity to wholesale customers in the United States. The company was one of the largest independent power producers in the nation with more than 14,000 megawatts of power generation capacity across...
, which allegedly used them to manipulate the California energy market. However, SCE still owns about half of the 1,580-MW coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
-fired Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nevada
Laughlin, Nevada
Laughlin is a census-designated place in Clark County, Nevada, United States, and a port located on the Colorado River. Laughlin is south of Las Vegas, located in the far southern tip of Nevada. It is best known for its gaming, entertainment, and water recreation. As of the 2010 census, the...
, which supplied electricity to California, Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
, and Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
. Mohave closed in December 2005, amid concerns regarding water rights and coal supplies.
Southern California Edison's power grid is linked to PG&E's by the Path 26
Path 26
Path 26 is a set of three Southern California Edison 500 kV power lines, located primarily in Los Angeles County, and extending into Kern and Ventura Counties, all in California...
wires that generally follow Interstate 5
Interstate 5
Interstate 5 is the main Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific Ocean coastline from Canada to Mexico . It serves some of the largest cities on the U.S...
over Tejon Pass
Tejon Pass
The Tejon Pass is a mountain pass at the southwest end of the Tehachapi Mountains linking Southern to Central California.-Geography:The apex of the pass is near the northwesternmost corner of Los Angeles County, north of Gorman...
. The interconnection takes place at a massive substation at Buttonwillow
Buttonwillow, California
Buttonwillow is a census-designated place in the San Joaquin Valley, in Kern County, California, United States. Buttonwilliow is located west of Bakersfield, at an elevation of 269 feet . The population was 1,508 at the 2010 census, up from 1,266 at the 2000 census...
. PG&E's and WAPA
Western Area Power Administration
The Western Area Power Administration markets and delivers hydroelectric power and related services within a 15-state region of the central and western U.S. It is one of four power marketing administrations within the U.S...
's Path 15
Path 15
Path 15 is an portion of the north-south power transmission corridor in California, U.S. It forms a part of the Pacific AC Intertie and the California-Oregon Transmission Project....
and Path 66
Path 66
Path 66 is the name of several 500 kV power lines that were built by Western Area Power Administration , Pacific Gas & Electric , and PacifiCorp in the early 1970s to 1990s and totally completed in 1993...
, respectively, from Buttonwillow north eventually connect to BPA
Bonneville Power Administration
The Bonneville Power Administration is an American federal agency based in the Pacific Northwest. BPA was created by an act of Congress in 1937 to market electric power from the Bonneville Dam located on the Columbia River and to construct facilities necessary to transmit that power...
's grid in the Pacific Northwest
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...
. There are several other interconnections with local and out-of-state utilities, such as Path 46
Path 46
Path 46, also called West of Colorado River, Arizona-California West-of-the-River Path , is a set of many alternating current high-voltage transmission lines that are located in southeast California and Nevada up to the Colorado River...
.
In addition, SCE operates a regulated gas and water utility. SCE is the sole commercial provider of natural gas and fresh water service to Santa Catalina Island
Santa Catalina Island, California
Santa Catalina Island, often called Catalina Island, or just Catalina, is a rocky island off the coast of the U.S. state of California. The island is long and across at its greatest width. The island is located about south-southwest of Los Angeles, California. The highest point on the island is...
, including the city of Avalon, California
Avalon, California
Avalon, or Avalon Bay, is the only incorporated city on Santa Catalina Island of the California Channel Islands, and the southernmost city in Los Angeles County. Besides Avalon, the only other center of population on the island is the small unincorporated town of Two Harbors...
. SCE operates the utilities under the names of Catalina Island Gas Company and Catalina Island Water Company.
Renewable energy
In 2009 Southern California Edison entered into a contract with Solar MillenniumSolar Millennium
Solar Millennium is a German globally active company in the renewable energy sector founded in 1998 in Erlangen, Germany, which is specialized in the designing and implementation of solar thermal power plants...
to purchase solar thermal power up to 726 MW.
Southern California Edison also entered into a contract with Stirling Energy Systems
Stirling Energy Systems
Stirling Energy Systems is a Scottsdale, Arizona-based company which develops equipment for utility-scale renewable energy power plants and distributed electrical generating systems....
to buy electricity from a 500 megawatt, 4,600 acre (19 km²), solar power plant which was due to open in 2009. The purchase was canceled in late 2010, as changes in technology reduced the cost of photovoltaic-based solar power to below that of solar Stirling generated power. This would have been the first commercial application of the dish stirling system. A different technology from the more familiar solar panel, the dish concentrates solar energy by the use of reflective surfaces and by the use of the Stirling heat engine to convert the heat into electricity.
In 2006, Southern California Edison planned to secure 1,500 megawatts or more of power generated from new projects to be built in the Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm
Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm
Wind development in the Tehachapi Pass began in the early 1980s. The area hosts a multitude of wind farms, comprising one of California's largest wind resource areas. The pass is undergoing much repowering activity...
area. The contract, which more than doubles SCE's wind energy portfolio, envisions more than 50 square miles (129.5 km²) of wind parks in the Tehachapi region, which is triple the size of any existing U.S. wind farm.
In March 2008, Southern California Edison announced a $875 million project to build a network of 250 megawatts of photovoltaic solar power generation, making it the biggest solar cell project in the nation. The photovoltaic cells will cover 65000000 square feet (6,038,697.6 m²) of rooftops in southern California and will generate enough power to serve 162,000 homes.
Southern California Edison received a 100% rating on the Corporate Equality Index released by the Human Rights Campaign
Human Rights Campaign
The Human Rights Campaign is the United States' largest LGBT advocacy group and lobbying organization; according to the HRC, it has more than one million members and supporters...
starting in 2004, the third year of the report.
Plug-in hybrids
Ford announced on July 9, 2007 that it will team up with Southern California Edison (SCE) to examine the future of plug-in hybrids in terms of how home and vehicle energy systems will work with the electrical grid. Under the multi-dollar, multi-year project, Ford will convert a demonstration fleet of Ford Escape Hybrids into plug-in hybrids, and SCE will evaluate how the vehicles might interact with the home and the utility's electrical grid. Some of the vehicles will be evaluated "in typical customer settings," according to Ford.Energy research and policy
Southern California Edison has a long history of research in the energy arena. Often this includes working with other companies and government entities. One example is the SOLARII feasibility generator, which was a solar powered energy plant that could produce electricity 24 hours a day. This was done by heating molten salts that would hold the heat during the day and would be used to generate power at night.Dr. John Jurewitz served as Director of Regulatory Policy for Southern California Edison for 15 years until his retirement in July 2007. His major areas of research are in oil, gas, and electricity policy and greenhouse gas
Greenhouse gas
A greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone...
regulation. He has testified and participated in government-sponsored proceedings addressing electric industry restructuring and energy policy
Energy policy
Energy policy is the manner in which a given entity has decided to address issues of energy development including energy production, distribution and consumption...
at the state, federal, and international levels.
See also
- Energy use in CaliforniaEnergy use in CaliforniaCalifornia, as the most populous U.S. state and home of Silicon Valley, is one of the country's largest users of energy, but because of a mild climate it has one of the lowest per-capita energy uses within the U.S.-Resources and consumption:...
- Solar power plants in the Mojave DesertSolar power plants in the Mojave DesertThere are several solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which supply power to the electricity grid. Solar Energy Generating Systems is the name given to nine solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which were built in the 1980s. These plants have a combined capacity of 354 megawatts making them...
- Wind power in CaliforniaWind power in CaliforniaWind power in California has been an area of considerable activity for many years. California was the first U.S. state where large wind farms were developed, beginning in the early 1980s. By 1995, California produced 30 percent of the entire world's wind-generated electricity...
External links
- Southern California Edison
- SCE Launches 250-MW Solar Project
- Southern California Edison’s Electric Vehicle (EV) Technical Center in Pomona, CaliforniaPomona, California-2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Pomona had a population of 149,058, a slight decline from the 2000 census population. The population density was 6,491.2 people per square mile...