CEC to Conduct Hearing on AES Redondo Beach

Representatives of the California Energy Commission will kick off the the application process Tuesday for a new power plant on North Harbor Drive with a site visit and informational hearing.

The current AES Redondo Beach Generating Station must be retired, rebuilt, retrofitted or receive a special exemption to continue operating past 2020 due to a ban on once-through cooling, where ocean water is used to cool the superheated steam that spins the turbines.

The new power plant, which would have less than half the generation capacity as the current one, would take up about 10 1/2 acres of the existing 50-acre site. If the plant is approved, construction and demolition of the old plant will begin in January 2016 and end by December 2020. 

• Complete coverage: AES Redondo Beach power plant

AES Southland, which owns the power plant, submitted its application to repower—rebuild—the generating station last November. The application was deemed "data adequate," meaning that there was enough information to proceed to the next step of the process, in late August.

The CEC will ultimately determine whether the new plant can be built; Tuesday's site visit and informational hearing is the first step in the public application process.

People who RSVP'd for the site visit will take buses from the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center to the Harbor Drive property at 4 p.m. The informational hearing, which is also an environmental scoping meeting, will start at 5:30 p.m. at the performing arts center.

The RBPAC is located at 1935 Manhattan Beach Blvd. in North Redondo Beach.

Those who can't attend the informational hearing in person may join the meeting via telephone, WebEx or both. For more information on how to connect remotely, see Page 7 of this document.