AES must amend application
AES power plant. Photo .
The California Energy Commission has ruled that AES Southland’s application for certification to re-power its Harbor Drive plant lacks sufficient data to inform a final decision.
The commission judged the application to be “data inadequate” at its meeting in Sacramento on Wednesday, Jan. 9.
On Dec. 19, the City of Redondo Beach sent a letter drafted by environmental lawyer David Waite of Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP to the California Energy Commission (CEC) highlighting areas of the AES Southland application that purportedly failed to address critical components of the proposed project.
CEC staff filed their own letter in response on Dec. 20, echoing the city’s concerns that the application does not contain enough information. The staff letter calls attention to just six areas of the application that are perceived to be “data inadequate,” whereas the city’s letter takes issue with almost every subhead of the application.
The CEC on Wednesday considered both the recommendations of the City of Redondo Beach and its own staff, ultimately ruling in their favor.
Now, AES Southland is required to file a more detailed and data-intensive version of its application to the CEC.
“It is normal practice for the CEC to require supplemental information before finding applications Data Adequate,” Clarissa Cordova of AES wrote in an e-mail to Easy Reader. “In fact, we’re not aware of any of the 118 applications filed with the CEC since 1996 being deemed data adequate upon filing and not required to supply additional information. The ‘inadequate data’ decision for the Redondo Beach Energy Project is expected and a normal part of the regulatory filing process.”
Cordova says AES is “working diligently to complete and submit these supplemental requests and we expect the CEC to deem our application as ‘data adequate’ during their next scheduled business meeting.”
After AES has submitted a revised version of its application, the CEC will again determine whether it is data adequate. If it is, the CEC has a deadline by which to approve or deny the application. The CEC is the final authority on whether AES has permission to re-power.
The CEC has published its estimated decision date as December 2013. ER