Karen,
I am not disputing that there was some gouging by energy producers in the State, but using consumption numbers from 2000 and comparing them to 1999 is flawed. IMO, it was also flawed to use consumption numbers from 2000, and equate these numbers to the demand.
The article states that: "Average peak demand -- the average of the highest hour of electricity usage for each day -- increased only 4.79 percent from 1999 to 2000. Even during the months of May to September in 2000, when the greatest spikes in electricity usage occur, demand growth was only 8.31 percent higher than the same period the year before"
--What the article doesn't say, is that between May and September 2000, the State and the ISO initiated several initiatives to significantly reduce power consumption. The Governor ordered State Offices and Facilities to reduce power consumption at least 5%. In addition, the ISO often had to initiate "power shedding" programs, that "asked" certain large users of electricity to shed power, and take themselves off the grid (to lower consumption, and avoid Stage 3 alerts and rolling blackouts). Finally, before 2000, power imports from the Pacific Northwest (during summer months) accounted to as much as 15% of the power the ISO purchased. These imports were much lower than normal (at times less than half) in the summer of 2000, for mostly natural reasons (drought).
The article states: "Even though a recent study found California ranked 47th out of the 50 states in per-capita energy consumption, the surging demand explanation has become so accepted that leading officials accept it as gospel."
--What the article neglects to mention, is that CA ranks equally low in power production per-capita.
The article states: "Then the pace of price increases began to accelerate within the last six months of 2000. Overall, average peak usage during December was about 31,200 megawatts, about a fifth lower than it was in August. Average prices in December? They just about doubled, to $425 a megawatt hour."
--What is not stated, is that (according to the SCAQMD), in 2000-2001 power plants in Southern California were running harder than they had previous years (by 300%). These plants ran so much, they far exceeded the amount of pollution regulators allow them to produce. This meant that producers had to buy "NOx pollution credits" on the open market to stay in operation. At one point pollution credits alone accounted to as much as $250 per MWhr (late 2000-early 2001). In addition, because of all the natural gas the producers were burning the price of gas shot up - Gov. Davis has stated that natural gas consumption accounts to about 30% of the price of electricity. I believe the FERC decided there was also manipulation by some natural gas pipeline companies as well (also adding to cost).
Finially, the consumption numbers they are siting look familiar to me, I think they are CAISO consumption numbers(California minus Los Angeles and some other cities with city-owned power companies). I'll have to check, but the power production numbers, look high, like maybe State wide numbers (maybe Raymond will remember, I can't). |
