Energy San Diego

Hilton Hotels Corp., one of Southern California's marquee businesses, will pull up stakes this year and move from Beverly Hills to the Washington, D.C., area, the company said Wednesday. The famous hotel operator has been headquartered in Beverly Hills since 1969 but was taken over in 2007 by corporate buyout giant Blackstone Group in a $26-billion deal that converted Hilton from a publicly traded Fortune 500 company to a private one.

Sempra Energy, the San Diego-based parent of Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric, said it had received the necessary land-use and environmental permits from the Mexican government to begin construction on a liquefied natural gas terminal in Baja California. The $600-million facility would be the first LNG terminal on the West Coast and would send gas to the California market as well as fuel electricity-generating stations in Baja. Construction is to begin next year.

State Sen. Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside) today will discuss electric industry deregulation at a town hall meeting. Also on the panel are California Public Utilities Commissioner Carl Wood, Chris Tooker of the California Energy Commission, San Diego Gas & Electric vice president of distribution services Steve Davis and Ray Thompson, Republican policy consultant for energy, utilities and communications in Sacramento. The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m.

Dynegy Inc. and NRG Energy Inc. on Thursday won the California Energy Commission's approval to build two generators at an El Segundo power plant. The 630-megawatt expansion will replace two gas turbines that the companies shut down because they were too costly to operate, said David Byford, a Dynegy spokesman. The project will take four years to complete once construction begins, he said. "Before we begin construction, we would need to enter a long-term contract," Byford said.

Sempra Energy's San Diego utility company can increase electricity rates for 1.2 million customers to recover $2 million it's spending on transmission lines to import power from Mexico, federal regulators said. San Diego Gas & Electric Co., California's third-largest utility, can bill customers for the expense and a 13% return on the investment over 10 years, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruled.