It was this electrical crisis upon which the San Jose, Calif.-based power company Calpine Corp. was banking when they first proposed the Metcalf Energy Center for the Coyote Valley area of South San Jose. However, the plant was shot down by the San Jose City Council last November, a move fueled largely by the energy center's would-be neighbor Cisco Systems' vehement opposition to its industrial nature. Cisco is in the process of building its own hotly debated 688-acre Coyote Valley Research Park in the area, and claimed it was not properly zoned for a power plant. However, the center is still up for consideration before the California Energy Commission, which according to Calpine has the legal right to overrule the City Council's objections.

"At this point, the state Energy Commission is holding hearings (on the issue)," San Jose public outreach manager Tom Manheim tells GlobeSt.com. "I don't know that any (similar proposed projects) are in the Bay Area."

The Commission will later this month continue to hold evidentiary hearings on the Metcalf Center, but even if it is approved, Manheim states, there's a long road between getting the thumbs-up and the actual construction of a new area power resource. "The timeline for building a power plant tends to be very long - years and years and years," he says. "As I've understood it, most of the problem we're experiencing right now is that the building of power plants hasn't caught up with the demand."