THE SCIENCE OF LIVING WITH THE LIGHTS OUT

by Diana Steele

I had my first experience of California's electricity affliction when the power went off in my home office on an unseasonably warm day in March. I'd finally gotten around to starting my taxes-on the computer, of course-when my screen suddenly went dark.

"Rolling blackout" wasn't the first thing that came to mind-after all, here in southern California we'd been insulated from the plague of blackouts that hit the north in January. But when I turned on my battery-powered radio, the local station was broadcasting a press conference from the local utility, saying that indeed, we'd been hit with our first rolling blackout.

The sudden electricity shortfall came about because of unexpectedly high temperatures-all those air conditioners getting cranked up-combined with unexpected generating shortfalls (a fire at one utility was the immediate cause).

Of course I hadn't saved my tax file. And without electricity, my business was shut down. No Web research, no story writing, no way to get the data I needed to work on my taxes. I wasn't writing on deadline-which was the reason I had time to work on my taxes in the first place-but I got a foretaste of the difficult summer ahead.

When power returned, I surfed the Web for home-office solutions. The most promising blackout insurance seems to be an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). At the low end of the price range, these battery-operated units cost about $60 and can keep a computer running for about 10 minutes after the electric grid goes down. Enough time to save work in progress and power down safely, as long as I'm sitting in front of it.

Surviving a power outage isn't as difficult as trying to anticipate one. And the threat of unexpected outages has sent a lot of people scrambling.

The AAAS meeting in San Francisco in February was held at the tail end of a 30-day run of "Stage 3" power emergencies in California. (Stage 3 means power reserves in the state are less than 1.5 percent, and rolling blackouts are imminent.) We were lulled into a sense of complacency when the state managed to keep the lights on all but a couple of days during that period. But behind the scenes, everyone had to make plans, just in case.

NASW Executive Director Diane McGurgan took her Girl Scout training to heart. Living by the motto, "Always Be Prepared," Diane packed pocket flashlights in her briefcase, purse, and suitcase.

AAAS Director of Communications Nan Broadbent made sure the press briefings could go on even if the lights went out. The meeting rooms included a few rooms with windows where the briefings could be held under natural light.

Wisconsin transplant Robert Naeye is extra vigilant about turning out lights. "I'm very conscious of the fact that energy is very expensive," he says. His electric bill for a small San Francisco apartment is four times what he paid in Wisconsin. And working for a small non-profit, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP), he knows that increased energy costs add up fast.

The ASP has only lost power once because of rolling blackouts. But Robert fumed because it happened on a day when he needed to get a lot of work done. Another blackout hit him at home on a Saturday just as he had his electronically controlled garage door halfway open.

At another San Francisco non-profit, the Exploratorium, Senior Science Writer Mary Miller says up till now the facility has largely been insulated from increasing energy costs because the city has paid for rent and utilities. But that largesse will soon end, and the Exploratorium will pay its own utility bill. To cover increases in general operating costs, Mary says the price of admission will go up a buck, to $9 for adults.

But when a rolling blackout hit Mary's home office earlier this year, she took the interruption in stride. She took her dogs to the park and played until the power came back on.

Around the state, the electricity crisis has drained the state's coffers of a $5 billion surplus, when the state stepped in to buy electricity for the fiscally strapped utilities.

The drain on California's budget is threatening to affect all sectors of the economy, including science and technology research. A $400 million initiative, the California Institutes for Science and Innovation-which includes funding for research in nanotechnology, telecommunications, information technology, and biotechnology-was briefly axed from the state's budget during March's dark days.

At federal facilities, like the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the lights are dimmed and the thermostats are turned up. Allan Chen, communications coordinator for the environmental energy technologies division, says the lab has already been working for years to reduce its energy use through improvements in energy efficiency-reducing consumption 28 percent and saving $2.3 million.

What got us into this mess? Not a sudden unforeseen increase in demand. Partly it's a decrease in available supplies from neighboring states. Mostly it's power generators cashing in on an unbelievably rich market. Utilities in California for the most part don't own their own generating capacity-one of the requirements of deregulation here-and instead they buy power from others and sell it to consumers.

The consumer prices are capped, but there's virtually no lid to the wholesale prices generators can charge the utilities. Even the CEO of Sempra Energy-one of the players in the new energy market-admits that market manipulation is rampant. The price of electricity is whatever the market will bear, he said in a recent talk at UCSD, "and it will bear a lot."

As for the forecast this summer? Depending on the weather and how quickly new power plants come on line, the lights could be out in various places around the state as often as once every three days.

So far, I'm reveling in the gloomy weather we're having right now in San Diego-it's the reason the power's still on. I haven't bought a UPS yet. I finally did get my taxes done, but next year I'm going to hire an accountant.

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Diana Steele is a freelance science writer based in San Diego.