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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (56111)	1/10/2001 12:05:30 PM
From: Ralph W.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Less than half an hour ago a stage one power alert was issued. This with the winter's first big storm slated to hit these parts tonight. Prediction is up to two feet of snow at 3500 foot levels. We're at 2800 feet. Got any suggestions? -g- R

To: Ilaine who wrote (56111)	1/10/2001 12:59:23 PM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

>>From what I've read, no one knows any whether any of this is true, because what is paid at the auction is treated as confidential business secrets and no one is telling. So if you've got a source for this, I'd be interested in seeing it.<< First, the point of my post was to show that "dereg" initially worked to the "disadvantage" of consumers for the first two plus years. This point is largely ignored. No regional/national or market crisis while the users were getting the oosik, eh? Re: the ute from the article: PG&E's utility reported second-quarter earnings of $216 million on $2.3 billion in revenue, a 26 percent increase over the same quarter last year. The parent company's stock closed at $24.75 a share last Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. So the utility itself was rolling in the dough Q2, while prices to the consumer were "artificially high" prior to the fall when prices to the utility went into the stratosphere...and that was my point...it cuts both ways. Re: the trading desk-- >>>Maybe you mean that Pacific Gas & Electric, which provides electricity directly to the consumer in California, is a subsidiary of PG&E Corp. and that PG&E Corp. had a good third quarter - don't think they've released 4th quarter EPS yet.<<< I meant both, the separate subsidiary conduit ute and the corp. (which includes the separate trading desk) for Q2 as stated in the article: Other PG&E power production units also are taking in unforeseen revenues, as are its unregulated energy commodity trading desk. That desk acts as middleman, or broker, buying power from generators and selling it to state system operators, who in turn provide it to utilities. Now a PGE spokesman claims the national energy group/power production is not benefitting from the CA situation: PG&E spokesman Greg Pruett said the company's profits for the most part have not come at the expense of California ratepayers. He said the company's profitability is also due to other factors, such as reducing losses. "Absolutely, positively, there is no doubt that our PG&E National Energy Group is in the market to earn a profit, a fair profit, and it's in those markets across the United States," Pruett said. "But I would quickly add that those markets are not as dysfunctional as the market in California. The situation in California is truly anomalous." The company's National Energy Group, based in Bethesda, Md., owns generators in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. It supplies power to residents of those states, but not to California. The unit posted a 233 percent profit in the second quarter as a New England heat wave in May sent wholesale prices surging to $6,000 a megawatt hour. OK. So, the power production unit couldn't make a profit in CA in Q2 because it is not producing power anymore, but we know how much it made other places. The ute is reduced to a conduit, but we know it was making $$$ while the price was "artificially high" and how much it was making. Nowhere is the $$$ for the unregulated trading desk broken out as far as I can tell. I think someone dug into the numbers and by process of elimination got a clue as to where they fall to the bottom line...and they looked mighty good...hence the mention in the Oct. article I think Q4 will be the real tell when we know the losses for the ute, national energy/power production numbers, etc...are. It might be hard to mask a big fat unregulated trading desk profit. No big New England heat wave or "artificially high" price caps to CA consumers profits to hide those positive numbers behind like Q2. (SI sucks. I've given up trying to format this response with bolds and italics so it's easier to read.)