SCE Calif. San Onofre reactor starts to exit outage

NEW YORK, May 13 (Reuters) - Southern California Edison's 1,080-megawatt Unit 3 at San Onofre nuclear power station in California started to exit a maintenance outage and ramped up to 1 percent power by early Tuesday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report.

The unit shut by April 16.

The 2,150 MW San Onofre station is located in San Clemente, about 60 miles north of San Diego. There are two units at San Onofre, the 1,070 MW Unit 2 and Unit 3, which entered service in 1983 and 1984.

Unit 2 continued to operate at full power.

One MW powers about 700 homes in California.

So Cal Ed, a subsidiary of Edison International (EIX.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), operates the station for its owners, So Cal Ed (78.21 percent), Sempra Energy's (SRE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) San Diego Gas & Electric subsidiary (20 percent), and the California city of Riverside (1.79 percent).

Edison International, of Rosemead, California, owns and operates about 14,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities in North America, and transmits and distributes electricity to about 4.6 million customers in central and Southern California. (Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by John Picinich)