2004 Power marketing program. Draft environmental impact statement

The Sierra Nevada Region proposes to develop a marketing plan that would be implemented in the year 2005 and to allocate power to eligible entities within its marketing area in northern and central California and Nevada. Four alternatives were analyzed that are structured around the range of operations of the Central Valley Project hydroelectric system, levels of power purchases, and customer group allocations. The manner in which hydropower generating plants are operated is one of the fundamental differences across the alternatives. Operating the hydrosystem to provide peaking power (the maximize hydropower peaking alternative, which is similar to the no-action alternative), would provide up to 94 t MW of additional load-carrying capacity in comparison to baseload operations of the CVP system (the baseload alternative). Although it is not possible to determine where or when any lost capacity would be made up, building replacement capacity in response to the baseload alternative would result in land-use impacts and the use of natural and financial resources. Peaking also results in small but beneficial regional economic effects. Peaking and baseload alternatives result in different hourly air emission patterns. The peaking alternative results in annual reductions in air pollution and wastewater. Impacts within the CVP are limited to regulating reservoirs, which would have reduced pool-level fluctuations under the baseload alternative. The regional economic effects of the Sierra Nevada Region's power purchases are small regardless of CVP operations and depend on their quantity and whether they are firm or economy purchases. Changes in allocations co customer groups result in small regional effects that are dependent on assumptions made about customer access to wholesale energy markets