AES Defends Plans to Repower Plant

The local power plant, , has recently been at the center of a heated debate. Due to new state requirements regarding once-through cooling, the plant must either repower (rebuild), or be decommissioned. One group, Building a Better Redondo, aims to have the plant removed and its land converted into a park.

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Officials from AES, on the other hand, have argued that a new plant will occupy a smaller footprint, produce less pollution and provide more power.

The first power plant at the site was built in 1887. AES representatives said the first breakwall in what would become King Harbor was built as part of that plant.

AES bought the 52-acre property from Southern California Edison, which still owns the switchyard, in two parts. The first portion, the boilers, was purchased in 1998; the land with the oil tanks was purchased later, and the oil tanks were removed.

According to AES, the power plant runs at least one of its boilers for at least 60 percent of the year, though that equals running at about 5 percent of the plant's total capacity of 1,400 megawatts. The plant employs 48 full-time workers and staffs two control rooms.

The company sees its natural-gas plant in Redondo Beach as one that complements its "green energy" operations, including solar and wind farms.

"We are here, standing by, ready to provide power when consumption increases," said AES Southland President Eric Pendergraft during a recent media tour of the plant.

Plans for the repowered plant, which won't use ocean water for cooling, were filed in April with the State Water Resources Control Board; however, officials from AES called them preliminary, and said the plans were likely to change over the next few months.

• Related: Complete Coverage of Power Plant Debate

"We would have preferred not to file [the plans] back in April," said Jennifer Didlo, AES' director of redevelopment for the new plant. Didlo added that she didn't believe the company was ready to present the new plans.

"It really happened, in our view, a little prematurely," Pendergraft said.

The new plant would not tower over the 95-foot Wyland Whaling Wall, as the current one does; it "also won't look as industrial," Didlo said.

"We're really excited about the possibility of changing the skyline," Didlo said. "It's an opportunity for us to do the right thing for California."

Once the official plans have been filed, they will go through 18-24 months of public hearings and review, Pendergraft said.

AES aims to have at least part of the new plant in operation by 2018.

Groups like BBR point to a 2010 CAISO report that indicates the plant is no longer needed because the Western Los Angeles Basin would have 26 percent excess capacity in 2015 without AES Redondo Beach. But Pendergraft and Didlo said they're looking farther into the future.

"Nobody should be saying that this power plant is definitively not needed," Pendergraft said, noting that the studies are ongoing.

Opponents of the plant argue that it's one of the top 100 polluters in California. According to AES, the No. 1 cause of pollution in the Los Angeles Basin is transportation related.

One way to reduce emissions is to electrify transportation, whether it's through electric trains or plug-in hybrid cars—and more electricity will be needed to power the vehicles.

"Statistics can be spun ... to make it appear that this is a dirty facility," Pendergraft said. "Electricity generation is cleaner than gasoline-powered transportation."

And as for the power plants in Chula Vista and San Francisco that were shuttered because of community opposition, Pendergraft said it's hard to compare the situations to the current one in Redondo Beach.

The plant in Chula Vista was built on leased land, and when the lease ran up, the company declined to renew it, Pendergraft said. He also said that the San Francisco plant was less than one-third the size of AES Redondo Beach.

"It's not nearly as simple as [opponents] make it sound," Pendergraft said.

Didlo said that AES is working to finalize its proposed plans, and when it does, it will release an artists rendering of the new design.

"The folks who oppose us, though, are the loudest," she said. "In this instance, a picture is going to tell 1,000 words."

Meanwhile, BBR continues to hold anti-power plant rallies Friday afternoons at the corner of Catalina Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway. The group is also pursuing an initiative that would rezone the plant's land into a mixture of parkland and commercial lots.