Drought Threatens to Close California Hydropower Plant for First Time

upstart writes:

Drought Threatens to Close California Hydropower Plant for First Time:

A California power plant likely will shut down for the first time ever because of low water during a prolonged drought, squeezing the state's very tight electricity supplies, state officials said yesterday.

The Edward Hyatt power plant, an underground facility next to Oroville Dam in Butte County, is expected to close in August or September, said John Yarbrough, California Department of Water Resources assistant deputy director of the State Water Project. The plant has run continuously since opening in 1967. It receives water from Lake Oroville, and that reservoir has dropped because of the drought, as CNN previously reported.

[...] In addition, "high heat events in California and the rest of the West have begun earlier than usual and have exceeded historic temperature levels," the California Energy Commission and California Public Utilities Commission leaders said in a July 1 letter to the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), the grid manager.

The state's power system expects to lose about 1,000 megawatts of power generation as a result. While that's a fraction of a system with daily peak demand of 44,000 MW, supplies already are tight, said Lindsay Buckley, a California Energy Commission spokesperson.

"Based on our May projections, we really didn't have 1,000 megawatts to lose," Buckley said in an interview.

[...] The loss of generation at the Hyatt plant would occur if the lake levels fall to around 630-640 feet of elevation, due to lack of water to turn the plant's hydropower turbines, said Yarbrough with the California DWR.

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