The first day of hearings were spent by a morning of "opening arguments" by the various parties in this case. The afternoon involved the cross examination of James Avery, senior vice-president for electric transmission at SDG&E.
The opening statements were a recapitulation of the parties' position. SDG&E provided a handout recounting the "benefits" of Sunrise. But embedded in the handout were some of the more damning elements of Sunrise. SDG&E touted Sunrise reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But then I pointed out and Commissioner Grueneich seized on the fact that SDG&E's modeling for Sunrise shows that the Southwest could import an additional 1000 MW (8000 gwhrs) of coal power if Sunrise is built. While SDG&E might not buy coal power (but they didn't deny it), SDG&E conceded that Sunrise could facilitate more coal power being brought into the Southwest.
The handout also listed all of the renewable resources in the Southwest. Amazingly, the list was bereft of geothermal power (as none is in the CAISO queue). It had only wind and solar. And most of that wind did not require Sunrise. Only 1400 of the 7144MW listed in the handout were located in the Imperial Valley and required Sunrise for importation. Again, the Commissioner focused in on that handout and asked questions about whether Sunrise is necessary.
The cross-examination of James Avery resulted in a couple of bombs. One big one was in response to my questioning about the cost of Sunrise. SDG&E claims the cost is $1.3 billion. Avery admitted that the project might be more expensive and that if there were overruns, the costs would be approved (or denied) by FERC, not the CPUC. In other words, there was very little that the CPUC could do if the project turned out to be more expensive than SDG&E has projected.
-Michael