Energy Crisis Real Despite Exemption

Despite the UCSB main campus's recent exemption from controlled, rotating blackouts by Southern California Edison, the university must faithfully continue its conservation efforts, Chancellor Henry Yang has said.

"Our classification as an 'essential customer' compels us to promote the campus as an exemplar of the best practices in energy conservation," he wrote in a recent campuswide memo cosigned by Richard Watts, chair of the Academic Senate. They emphasized that "we need to do more than our fair share."

Positive results from a five-day energy reduction test provided evidence that UCSB employees' individual actions make a difference. The average power consumption dropped by 1,540 kW, or almost 14 percent, reported Jim Dewey, energy manager for Facilities Management. "Whatever people are doing [to conserve building electricity] is working," he said, "but the effort has to be consistent."

With summer air-conditioning demands looming, UCSB has joined other UC and California State University campuses in a state government initiative to chop electricity use 10 percent for short periods. This rapid-response reduction, called the Demand Relief Program, is designed to be implemented within 30 minutes of notification.

UCSB's exemption from regular rolling blackout operations was largely due to safety considerations, Dewey explained. The main campus's application for "essential customer" status underlined its citylike functions of sewage disposal, police and fire protection, and on-campus residential living requirements as well as research and laboratory needs for consistent power.

However, Edison also exempted many off-campus units, Dewey was informed. These included the Orfalea Family Children's Center on West Campus, some sites in Isla Vista, the Hollister Research Center, and even places in Bishop and Mammoth Lakes. "We got lucky," he said. "They were on electrical circuits that already had blackout exemptions" because of other essential customers.

To know if your home is on an exempt circuit, call 1-800 611-1911 and speak to an operator. You can also ask for Edison's block number for your address (or find it on this month's bill) if you are subject to outages, and track on the utility's Web site the blocks affected during a rolling blackout.