plicity helps anything in terms of the public interest. But I think we have got to find a rational system, a rational process, over a wide enough area so that the public can become convinced through a process of education and exposure and information that what our real objective is, is to make the best possible use of fewer resources of the region so that they can be used wherever they are needed in that region.

I think it is possible to go to small towns if you have got that kind of a system and procedure, you have established it and you have sold it, I think it is possible then to go to a small town which may not see an immediate relationship between the transmission line you are seeking to build through some portion of its territory, and the power needs of New York, I think if you can make them see that there is a relationship between that line and the power resources of the whole region, which includes, then, at least you have got the beginnings of a chance of selling them on the idea, and I think it won't be until you get to that point that you are going to be able to sell them on that transmission line.

Mr. LUCE. We have made that argument as forcefully as we know how.

Senator MUSKIE. We have got to begin making it. The only way we can begin making it is if we can find, with your help and the people who are concerned about the environmental values, the procedure for doing it, and we do not have it now.

You are frustrated by it because you have to go to so many agencies with your hand out for their permission, agencies which do not coordinate their work with each other, who do not relate their standards to each other. It must be done.

I do not think I could take it, frankly, if I had to go from door to door, as you have to, to get these permits. It does not make any sense in terms of the public interest because no citizen can focus on the result of this process.

If I were to try to sit down, and I have some experience with this kind of business, at least on this end of it, the ultimate public interest result that is achieved by this multiplicity, what is it, 20 to 25 permits that you have to get, I do not think I could do it. I do not think it would be clear, and without that, how can you sell the public on what you are trying to do.

So I do not think we are in conflict, Mr. Luce.

Mr. LUCE. I do not either, Senator.

Senator MUSKIE. I think we will have disagreements as to particular sites. We will have disagreements about the interpretation of the results produced at a particular plant. We may have disagreements about the extent to which economic growth ought to be limited in New York City, and maybe it ought to be, maybe the city fathers ought to be thinking about policies of that kind.

I am wondering how the power demands of one of those New York office buildings compare with some of the largest of Maine's towns. Mr. LUCE. I can tell you. The new World Trade Center will have electrical and steam energy requirements larger that a city of 100,000 people.

Senator MUSKIE. We do not have any such cities in Maine.

Mr. LUCE. We have got to get the electrical and steam service to them.

Senator MUSKIE. I am not inviting you to send them up, not in such numbers. [Laughter.]

Mr. Luce, thank you very much.

Mr. LUCE. Thank you.

Senator MUSKIE. Our next witness is Mr. Joseph C. Swidler, chairman of the New York Public Service Commission.

Mr. Swidler, thank you very much for your patience.

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH C. SWIDLER, CHAIRMAN, NEW YORK PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION, ACCOMPANIED BY HAROLD COLBETH, ACTING CHIEF, ELECTRIC DIVISION

Mr. SWIDLER. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to be here to testify on S. 2752, in the light of the power supply crisis now facing the city of New York.

Mr. Harold Colbeth, acting chief of the Electric Division of the New York State Public Service Commission, is here with me.

At Governor Rockefeller's request, Mr. Muskie, I have been sending him weekly reports on the power supply situation in the State of New York since the beginning of the summer. Eight such reports have been submitted, and together they present a picture of the developments as they have occurred. I am offering a file of these reports for the use of the subcommittee.1

Senator MUSKIE. I wonder, Mr. Swidler, if you could pull that microphone a little closer. Sorry, I am told it is not working. Power failure? [Laughter.]

Mr. SWIDLER. I am glad it is not in New York.

Senator MUSKIE. Then I guess you will have to assume you do not have any electronic assistance, and you will have to speak a little more loudly.

Mr. SWIDLER. In this small room I should be able to take care of that.

As this committee well knows, electric power supply is tight throughout the country. The situation in New York is only a little worse than in many other places. And Mr. Nassikas mentioned some of those today. There have been 5-percent voltage reductions in New England and PJM territory as well as in New York City.

There is no single cause, but rather many contributing factors. I should like to summarize what seem to me to be the principal reasons why this country's margins of reserves are so low that we skate in many parts of the country on the brink of shortages.

Perhaps first in importance is the fact that the schedules for placing nuclear plants in service have all been stretched out, with only a few exceptions, and that plans for a number of nuclear installations have been abandoned after much time and a good deal of preliminary work had gone into them. The delays, in turn, have been due to a number of causes. Protracted licensing procedures resulting from objections on environmental grounds have been a principal problem. Manu

1 Retained in subcommittee files.

facturing and construction delays have also played an important part. The abandonments have all been due, I believe, to opposition based on environmental considerations.

There have been other contributing factors. Quality control in the new large generating units, both fossil fuel and nuclear, leaves much to be desired, and break-in periods have been more extended than anticipated. Load growth has exceeded forecasts.

A positive feature of the power situation has been the demonstration of the value of interconnections in supporting service. Power is now flowing into New York from the Midwest, the Southeast, New England, and from two Provinces of Canada, not to mention the primary support from the other members of the New York Power Pool. If it were not for some weak links in the New York Power Pool network and in the regional interconnections, there would have been no serious problems of power supply in New York, despite the outages of the Ravenswood and Indian Point units. The story could be repeated for many other points in the country.

Transmission lines have a very high inherent reliability as compared to generating capacity. They are not a substitute for generating capacity. There must be generating capacity somewhere which can be transmitted. But when there is an emergency at any point they serve a vital function, within the limitations of generating and transmission capacity in the interconnected network, of bringing to bear all surplus and reserve power for the benefit of the shortage area. This is the point you have been making, Senator, throughout these hearings.

Senator MUSKIE. I wonder if you can expand on it a little. You say except for some transmission blockages, there would have been no serious problems of power supply in New York, despite the outages of the Ravenswood and Indian Point units.

What you are saying is that but for the transmission line inadequacies there were blocks of power within ranges of New York City that could have avoided the emergency?

Mr. SWIDLER. Yes, sir. But a little special angle on that-I am not referring to a planning problem. If the lines under construction and scheduled for completion by this summer had been completed on time there would have been no shortages.

I am speaking primarily of the link with the PJM pool, a couple of links with the PJM pool, as well as the southern tier interconnection. Those links have been greatly delayed, and just as generating capacity that is not built on time is a threat to continuity of power service, transmission lines also have their factors of delay in meeting construction schedules.

Senator MUSKIE. Does this factor in any way affect the use of whether or not to expand the Astoria plant as requested?

Mr. SWIDLER. Oh, possibly, in an ideal situation.

You spoke of bringing in power from the outside. That was discussed pretty much in generalized terms. When you come down to the specifics, this turns out to be a very difficult thing to do. The problem is not only, Senator Muskie, that New York is large, and the problem is not only that Consolidated Edison operates in a very small territory, although both of these are facts, but beyond these, however, is the fact that New York is a peninsular location. It is very hard to enter.

46-966-71-pt. 2-14

It is surrounded by extensive built-up suburbs. You cannot go very far in most directions without running out of your own State.

So that when you begin to look for power supply elsewhere or for sites elsewhere, you find many difficult complications.

Senator MUSKIE. Were there any particular difficulties, technological or technical difficulties, of making use of TVA's power to meet New York's problem?

Mr. SWIDLER. The only problem there, Senator Muskie, was the inadequacy of transmission. More was available that were served by the same links of the PJM pool. American Electric Power Co. and Illinois Power Co. had a block of about 300 megawatts that could have been made available. But it could not be brought in.

There was additional transmission capacity to bring in power from the East, from New England, but they, too, were suffering from shortages of power supply. They were affected by the same spell of hot weather and they had their own equipment problems, so that they had difficulty simply in meeting their firm commitment to Consolidated Edison. But power from the West, where some was available, was blocked by missing links in the transmission chain.

Senator MUSKIE. Were these equipment failures unusual in their number and seriousness? Were they beyond what should have been reasonably or could have been reasonably anticipated, that should have been reasonably covered by reserve margins?

Mr. SWIDLER. No. I think we have all known that Con. Ed.'s-you are talking about Consolidated Edison in particular?

Senator MUSKIE. Yes.

Mr. SWIDLER. I think we have all known that Consolidated Edison had a pretty tight power situation before Ravenswood went out.

Senator MUSKIE. It was said to have an 18-percent reserve margin. Mr. SWIDLER. Yes. But I think when you deal with margins of reserves, as Chairman Nassikas said, you need to look at the specifics again.

It depends, as he pointed out, on the size of your largest unit. That is one consideration.

In the case of Consolidated Edison you also have to take into account the quality of the reserves. Consolidated Edison has been forced by its inability to build new plants to continue in operation a number of old ones with a very low reliability factor. In some of those plants it takes all the maintenance that Consolidated Edison can give to rely on-I pick a figure out of the air but, perhaps, it is 50 or 60 percent of that capacity.

So although it appears in their list of available generating units, and the amounts are in the totals for generating capacity, not all of it is expected to be available at once.

Senator MUSKIE. What should be the policy with respect to reserve requirements if we are to set a policy that will avoid these kinds of crises?

Mr. SWIDLER. In the National Power Survey, in which I had a hand, we gave there, I confess, perhaps the greatest weight to the economy factor, and we looked at interconnections as a means of reducing margins of reserves.

I am not sure whether we expressed the hope that eventually they

could be reduced to 15 percent, perhaps it was 12, by use of strong interconnections, because the more reserves that must be maintained, the higher the cost, and if you could find the magic formula that gave you exactly the amount of reserves you were going to need, and no more, you would have the lowest possible investment and the lowest possible rates, which is what we were looking at.

Now, the extent of the interconnections is a factor in the margin of reserves as well as, I say, the size of the generating units and the quality of the reserves.

Something depends-if you are talking about percentages-on whether you have factored into your load estimates a margin for unexpected growth or whether this is treated as a contingency factor to be taken care of in reserves.

I think we have all learned, because of the uncertainties of power supply and the uncertainties of scheduling, that with respect to reserves, the numbers we used to talk about are not large enough under present conditions; that we must achieve a greater certainty in scheduling, and in bringing the units on the line, and eliminating long break-in periods before we can again emphasize the economic factors and say, "Let's bring the reserves down to the lowest value in order to make power as cheap as possible," because reliability comes first. I think this is a lesson that has been drummed into us in the 6 years since that survey was published. Now, I would lead toward generosity in the size of reserves rather than pinching them down, but I cannot give you a single figure.

Senator MUSKIE. What is your view of the merits of a national grid system with regional authorities to meet some of these objectives? Mr. SWIDLER. I heard the colloquy that has taken place in response to the question, the same question you have asked other witnesses, and you will indulge me for a moment, I shall try to give you an answer. Transmission lines must connect generation to load. The economic problem is that in order to justify transmission from a distant point, your cost at that distant point must be lower by at least the cost of transmission.

if

In a country like ours with fairly well-distributed fuel resources of one kind or another, there are not many occasions where it is profitable to transmit large blocks of power over great distances. It is cheaper to build a generating plant near your load.

This is not true in the U.S.S.R., which I visited a year or 2 after you did, Senator Muskie. In the U.S.S.R., they have these enormous hydro potentials on the Yenisey River, and on the Lena, with perhaps, a thousand or 1,500 miles between those sites and the urban and industrial centers where the power could be used.

Now, there it pays to have point-to-point transmission of large blocks of power. You might visualize a similar situation in this country if the Ramparts project, for example, should be built in Alaska and bring in a block of 4,000 megawatts of power. It could not be used in Alaska, would have to be brought to the lower-48 States, and it would probably go via a very high-voltage line, probably d.c. We have no other such situations in this country that I know about.

Therefore, transmission must be predicated primarily on exchanges, on taking advantage of diversity, on economy transfers, on emergency support, and on some greater range of choice in site location.