California power grid cleared for renewable power

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The California power grid manager on Tuesday praised a decision taken on Monday by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission designed to alleviate bottlenecks in connecting new power generation projects to the transmission grid in California.

About two-thirds of the projects in the long queue for review by the Cal ISO are for renewable power.

"The good news is that renewable power projects are clamoring to supply electricity to California consumers," said Yakout Mansour, president of the California Independent System Operator.

"The better news is we can take the first step toward freeing bottlenecks that have prevented these exciting projects from coming on-line," Mansour said.

FERC ruled that the Cal ISO can waive some rules and schedules for new power plants hooking up to the grid, allowing the ISO to reduce the backlog, the grid manager said.

The ISO will place project requests into three groups, and delay review of requests submitted after June 2 of this year.

The high number of filings -- including those for projects with little chance of being commercially viable -- was caused in part by the bonanza seen by developers of renewable power.

California requires 20 percent of power delivered by the state's investor-owned utilities to be generated by renewable power by 2010.

The Cal ISO has 361 interconnection requests totaling more than 105,000 megawatts in the queue. Of those, more than 68,000 MW are from renewable power generation.

This is higher than the highest peak demand ever on the Cal ISO system, which was just over 50,000 MW.

The grouping of projects, which was part of the plan approved by FERC on Monday, is the first step in a two-step process for easing the backlog, said the Cal ISO.

The Cal ISO board last week approved a "Generator Interconnection Process Reform" plan that will be filed in a few weeks with FERC.

If this plan is approved by FERC, it will, the Cal ISO said, increase the financial commitment needed for project developers to be in the queue and stay in the queue.

The GIPR plan would also give developers a better idea of their timelines and shares of interconnection costs, the Cal ISO said.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Gary Hill)