To quick to lay the blame on"regulation" which stigmatizes a legitimate but flawed attempt to introduce market mechanisms
Come on... trying to manage all power supplies through the spot market is great if nothing suddenly goes awry, like NG prices spiking through the roof, or all of your power comes from relatively stable sources like Nuclear or Hydro.
And if these utilities had the ability to issue more debt to pay for buying power elsewhere, are you still telling me they couldn't have floated a bond issue to build more capacity?
I'll tell you straight out that the events that have converged all at the same are extraordinary and hard to anticipate. But it has not been a secret about the maintenance headaches of California's aging power plants (40 years), going down for unscheduled work after a tough summer, and becoming more dependent on energy imported from other states where they have no regulatory control.
What have the ratepayers of California done wrong?
Wanting their cake and eat it too... They want economic growth, cheap power, but no new utilities in their state (or only after the most excruciating environmenal impact paperwork). But we know you cannot base sound economic growth on unstable sources of energy. And despite it's attractiveness as a clean fuel, natural gas is unstable with regard to supply, transport, and storage given its inherent volatility.
All it would take is one major pipeline rupture and gas supplies would effectively be cut off. But coal, hydro, or nuclear don't face such problems.
So where I blame the california rate payer is for their naieve in NIMBY and their "anywhere but here" attitude. Now my relatives in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho are finding THEIR power rates going up because California was so dependent on importing foriegn power to tide them over.
And thanks... I'd almost forgotten about AZNT. What a joke that was.
Regards,
Ron |
