1980s: How to plan for the future?
The turmoil of the late 1970s continued into the 1980s. It wasn't an easy time to plan for Sacramento's future energy usage.
How much electricity would SMUD need to provide, and how quickly?
SMUD turned to its customer-owners for input. In 1983, relying on months of public input and analysis, SMUD developed an energy supply plan for the community. It called for new contracts with federal power agencies to buy additional low-cost power, construction of a geothermal steam generation plant in Sonoma County, expanded American River hydroelectric facilities and solar energy generation at the Rancho Seco site.
Residential and commercial customers were receptive to SMUD's call for energy efficiency. They turned to SMUD for expert help in everything from redesigning lighting and heating and air conditioning systems to weather-stripping windows and replacing incandescent lamps with energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs).
Responding to customer concern about rising rates, the SMUD Board set up a ratemaking balancing account to lessen the effect of market price shifts in power costs. SMUD staff worked to switch the utility's base of energy independence away from Rancho Seco. Instead, they focused on transmission -- the buying, selling and trading of power throughout the western United States.
These steps allowed SMUD to keep its average rates about 17 percent lower than those in surrounding communities. In 1984, residents in Folsom voted to join SMUD, adding 141 square miles to District territory.
But problems continued to plague Rancho Seco. The plant experienced an outage that lasted 27 months. SMUD undertook extensive upgrades to improve the plant's reliability, but output continued to be disappointing.
On June 7, 1989, SMUD took Rancho Seco off-line in swift response to the previous day's election in which 53.4 percent of the voters called for SMUD to close the nuclear plant.