In addition to Zeuspaul's comments, I would add that if you're going to continue to ignore the evidence of manipulation by the players and see no negligence by FERC, there's not much point in continuing this.
As El Paso was holding back gas supply, other generators were shutting down plants, perhaps independently, but with the effect of exercising market power. Ten to fifteen thousand mw were off-line at the height of the gouging, an unprecedented number. While DavesM has said part of that may have been QFs shutdown due to non-payment, that's another byproduct of the dereg. and just argues further against it. Look at this chart of daily supply and demand in the link :
caiso.com
During the gougings the demand was only around 30-32,000 mw, and maximum supply was about 45,000 mw including imports. Today, as over the past several years, outages have averaged 3-5,000 mw per day, rarely ever exceeding 6-7,000. In January-May they quickly hit up to 15,000 as the system was gamed. That caused the "shortages" that led to extreme gouging before the price caps. At about the time they were holding the gun to Davis' head to sign long term contracts (he had no assurances price caps would be implemented at that time). It wasn't extreme demand. Now, on the very hottest days statewide, demand has reached around 40-42,000 mw, which is close to a genuine crunch. That's where the caps come into play, but we haven't had this situation except a few days in late June/early July when the heat was really on. We will not cede power over OUR grid to these manipulators.
Additionally, we have the new stories coming out about conflicts of interest with advisors and commission heads. Here's two new ones, one a Wilson appointed CEC head, the other a Davis advisor:
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
Just like Drill and Spill Cheney's secret energy panel, the foxes are guarding the hen house. But big energy seems to be quite satisfied with this situation -- after all, they're getting the best government money can buy. Except from Davis, who's confounding them, though he's been lax about checking for conflicts of interest with some of his advisors. Funny how the repubs downplay the Karl Rove stock holdings, while jumping all over Davis though. Politics as usual. |
