BROWNOUTS IN DUKAKASSIA AND CUOMOLAND

During the week ending August 6, US utilities broke the all-time record (itself only three weeks old) by delivering 65.4 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), not all of it produced by sunbeams and wind-mills. As the long, hot summer dragged on, that record may well have been broken again when the rest of the August statistics are in. For the first half of this year, electric sales ran 5.2% ahead of last year, which itself surpassed 1986 by 4.5%. And it wasn't the one hot summer of 1988 that has made the average yearly growth in electric energy consumption 3.5%/year; it was the long apparent trend of electricity growing far faster than energy consumption as a whole. That is merely the inevitable result of advancing technology and an expanding economy. But how long can it expand? Only until it reaches the limits to growth set by the Limits-to-Growthers and enforced by the Dukakises and Cuomos.

In New England, the demand exceeded last year's by 8.5%; volt-age was commonly cut by 5% (resulting in power reduction by 9.75%), emergency power had to be purchased, some industrial customers were disconnected. The New England Power Pool repeatedly appealed to the public to use less electricity, but not to Nancy to let her husband sign what's on his desk and let Sea-brook's 1,150,000 kilowatts loose into New England's power net. Harvard acceded to the request and shut its doors for only the third time in 353 years. (Every cloud has a silver lining . . . )

For the New York Power pool, the story was similar, though not quite as bad. The New York State Energy Office announced that Long Island needs capacity immediately, but since their boss keeps Shoreham's 809,000,000 kW idle as an energy producer (though highly active as a money pit), the implication is that Long Islanders can pay for oil with what's left after paying off Shoreham or better still, use renewable energy with treadmills.

Except for the additional folly of keeping Seabrook and Shore-ham closed, the story was similar around the country. Demand reached levels not expected until the 1990s, and in some cases the 2000s (funny word, but there it is)--Commonwealth of Chicago, for example, experienced a demand that it had not expected until 2005. However, except for cutting off power to "interruptible" in-dustrial customers on August 3, Commonwealth Edison the na-tion's most nuclear utility (50%), was able to meet the demand thanks to its four newest nuclear reactors. Two years ago they had been opposed by the antinukes as unneeded, but on August 1 to 4 they took 25% of the all-time record load.

California, too, broke all previous records of demand, and though it can boast the giant Solar Two power plant (with 1/60^th of Seabrook's power whenever the sun is out), some of its utilities were left with alarmingly low capacity margins. Pacific G&E, for example, was down to a 5.2% margin in generating capacity.

So what? Isn't a miss as good as a mile?

Air safety experts don't think so.

And yet their only weighty objection to a near miss of two air liners by 12 inches is that it's too close to no inches at all. But utili-ties have additional reasons: a miss costs more than a mile.