MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – Gov. James Douglas on Thursday urged Vermonters to save power to help avert rolling blackouts that could be needed because of electricity shortages in southern New England.

Douglas said the power shortage was caused by a shortage of natural gas used to power electric generating plants in southern New England.

Steve Costello, a spokesman for the Central Vermont Public Service Corp., said a number of plants that produce a total of 4,000 megawatts of electricity had been shut down because they were out of fuel.

The fuel shortage was caused by excessive retail demand for natural gas used to heat homes as well fuel power plants, Costello said. He wouldn’t identify the plants that have shut down.

“The way the system is designed they won’t tell you who’s off and who’s on. They are out of gas,” Costello said. “The demand for retail gas is so high. There are plants that are not operating.”

But the president of the Northeast Gas Association said there was plenty of natural gas. Any shortages of electricity are because of problems in electric industry, said Tom Kiley of the Needham, Mass.-based trade organization that represents the gas industry in New England and New York.

“It could be a variety of things” causing the plants to shut down, such as not having large enough pipelines to meet demand, he said.

“For those customers that have reserved pipeline capacity their supply is available and on track,” Kiley said.

Costello said this was the first time in his seven years at CVPS the utility has even had to make an appeal for power conservation during the winter.

By mid-evening Thursday the crisis seemed to be easing as CVPS started to see its demand go down, Costello said.

ISO New England set a winter record peak on Wednesday of 22,400 megawatts, Costello said. The summer peak is over 25,000 megawatts.

“The difference here is the loss of the 4,000 megawatts,” Costello said.

Costello said there was plenty of power to meet Vermont’s electric demand, but Vermont is part of the New England electric grid.

ISO New England, the organization that manages the grid, could order its rolling or rotating, blackouts to reduce energy consumption and balance demand with supply.

If ordered, every utility in New England would be required to shut off circuits for short periods of time. Circuits would be shut down and restored on a rotating basis, he said.

CVPS circuits would only be shut off for a short time, about 20 minutes, Costello said.

“Rolling blackouts would be an inconvenience, but we are cognizant of the hardship long outages would cause, and if they occur, we will work to minimize that inconvenience,” Costello said.

AP-ES-01-15-04 2116EST