California's growing reliance on natural gas to fuel its power plants will increase and power prices will remain elevated following Southern California Edison's decision to retire a crippled nuclear power plant.
Both reactors at the 2,150-megawatt (MW) San Onofre plant will be permanently closed due to uncertainty over the cost and timing of restarting one of the units, said SCE, a unit of California energy company Edison International, on Friday.
While the grid agency has warned that the loss of San Onofre could cause rolling outages this summer as use of air conditioners soars, old and new power plants fueled by natural gas will likely pick up the slack.
Because the San Onofre reactors have been shut since January 2012, analysts said there should be little immediate impact to electricity or gas markets from SCE's decision not to seek regulatory approval to restart the nuclear plant.
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