The SF Public Utilities Commission and the Board of Supervisors will soon be hearing details of a new contract to build two fossil fuel-burning power plants in the city. JPower, an Illinois-based subsidiary of the national power company of Japan, backed out of a deal to build a plant for the city when, back in October, the Board and PUC urged city staffers to pursue a city-owned operation instead.
Now a company called ICC is negotiating a deal with the city to build and run the plant, but according to PUC staff, the city would own the facility outright. The previous deal would have given JPower control of the facilities to run for profit, eventually turning ownership over to the city after 30 years. The ICC contract includes upgrading the four turbines, constructing the plants, and negotiating the land transactions, and power purchase and interconnection agreements.
The “peaker” power plant, which includes three natural gas combustion turbines generating 150 megawatts of power for “peak” needs, will be sited in the Bayview/Potrero neighborhood. A fourth turbine will be in southern San Francisco, as emergency reserve power for the airport.
The California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO) has said San Francisco needs an on-demand “firm” power source for optimal grid reliability, but many have questioned the viability of that claim now that the Transbay Cable will be funneling more wattage our way and Community Choice Aggregation is coming online, a plan that would cut our electricity needs and replace much of them with renewables. The Brightline Defense Project, representing the A. Philip Randolph Institute and residents of Bayview who have been overwhelmed with power plant pollution for decades, have sued the city to stop the plant.
At last Friday’s LAFCO hearing, PUC staffer Barbara Hale offered a brief update on the contract and said it would be heard by the PUC on Tuesday and if accepted, sent on to the Board for ultimate approval. Despite a more publicly-owned and controlled plan for the plants, Supes. Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly are still questioning whether the city really needs then at all. “I’m just not sold on the fact that we need the peakers,” said Mirkarimi.
Daly asked about the status of closing the notoriously noxious Mirant power plant, which has been the hook for the peakers – ISO has said they’d pull the “reliability must-run” agreement that keeps Mirant open if they could count on power coming into the grid from the peakers. Back when JPower was still in the picture, Mayor Gavin Newsom negotiated a sweet deal with Mirant, which agreed to shutter in exchange for special favors from the Planning Department when they settle on a new use for the land.
Daly, citing the deal, said, “Very clearly the goal posts have been moved on the issue of Mirant.” He urged the city to move them again when it comes to the peakers, by coming together to oppose them and tell Cal-ISO we don’t want them. “I think what Sacramento is taking advantage of is we’re not together…I’m sick of getting bullied around by Sacramento bureaucrats….If we really want to wean ourselves off the dirty fossil fuel plants it’s going to take the spending of some political will.”
Mirkarimi asked Hale, if the peakers didn’t exist, what would shut Mirant. Hale said Cal-ISO only sees dispatchable, on-demand power as adequate. Intermittent renewable resources like wind and solar (though ISO may be changing their tune on solar) don’t count. “There are renewable resources that do, like geothermal.” She said the PUC was currently studying the possibility of deep-well geothermal for San Francisco.