HASSO HERING

Pacific Power’s Vine Street substation in Albany, photographed one day in October 2022.

Pacific Power last week gave us a foretaste of what’s in store in coming years if Oregon continues its drive to make electricity more expensive and the power supply less reliable.

The  utility sent customers in Albany and elsewhere an emailed notice as the nighttime temperature was forecast to dip below freezing “over the weekend and into Martin Luther King Jr. Day.”

The company said the advice was intended to help customers “to conserve energy to help keep bills low.”

One reason the price of electricity has shot up in the last couple of years is that Pacific Power is working to comply with the Oregon “Climate Protection Program.” The goal of the program is to phase out energy production from coal and gas and to rely on renewable sources instead.

This requires enormous investments in not just new solar and wind-powered energy plants but also in transmission lines, not to mention securing backup sources for the times that renewables are not available.

If this process is continued and eventually completed, electric bills will have to keep rising faster than inflation.

And when it gets cold in the winter and there’s no wind or sunlight — like on cold winter days and nights — the power companies may have to limit the the amount of demand on their systems. That means intentional blackouts.

I just came across an explanation of this in the United Kingdom, where something similar took place on Jan. 8. It’s an interview of an energy expert on a program called “Unherd,” and you can find it here.

In Oregon, consumers would like to be assured there’s plenty of capacity in the energy supply system for when we need it to keep from freezing to death, and that people can afford the price.

We don’t want to be told to turn the heat down when it’s cold. (hh)