San Diego Reader Will These Keep the Lights On?

San Diego Reader | Will These Keep the Lights On? http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2008/may/28/cover/?printCover StoryWill These Keep the Lights On?By Joe Deegan | Published Wednesday, May 28, 2008The Sunrise Powerlink gleamed for the first time in Sempra Energy’s eye on November 1, 2002. At the company’sSan Diego headquarters, an energy-management expert from Shell Trading gave a PowerPoint presentationhighlighting the potential transmission line. Nameless at first, the new line would run from the Imperial Valley, nearthe Mexican border, to Rainbow, northeast of Fallbrook.According to the presentation that day, the transmission line would have two major advantages. It would connect the Southern California electricity grid to potential geothermal, wind, and solar energy sources in the Imperial Valley. And the line would be able to transmit power from two power generation plants in Mexicali.The plan counted for its northern terminus on a new substation in Rainbow. The substation had already figured into another transmission project, proposed by the San Diego Gas & Electric Company as a way to link with Southern California Edison lines near Perris in Riverside County. But residents of southwestern Riverside County were fighting the plan vigorously. In 2003, the California Public Utilities Commission rejected that project and with it the Rainbow substation.Today, SDG&E, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy, touts a new 150-mile Sunrise Powerlink as the way to ...