OT: California's Unique Ability to Shoot Itself in the Foot
Hi Don,
That was a wonderful rant, and highly appreciated in these quarters. There is a lot of common ground between what you say and how I see the situation. First of all, here's the URL for DoE Sec'y Abrams speech:
uschamber.org
I did catch a fair bit of the first day's proceedings on Monday night's rebroadcast on C-SPAN. Daniel Yergin, of CERA (a different conference is archived here)
www20.cera.com
made the point on Monday that an immediate 20% retail price hike in California would relieve at least 30% of the spinning reserve problems that the state currently suffers from. Whatever the figures happen to be, it sure seems to me that it is ludicrous to keep the retail energy costs at their present level.
Re: Rhetorical question do you see the Ca. problem in any of the other 50 states?
The non-rhetorical answer is that many industry observers see a great possibility for brown-outs and black-outs in NYC this summer due to transmission constraints. There is a lengthy article about this in the NY Times archives, and I've posted about this on the New Frank Coluccio Technology Forum.
Re: See if you can reviewed Spence Abraham's speech....It will be a real eye opener.
Actually, I don't think that I'm anywhere near as naive about the energy situation in California as you might suppose me to be. I've been spending many hours on the subject since the middle of December and have been aware of the situation as it has been shaping up since mid-1996, when I first became aware of the flawed legistative effort at de-regulation through the Bay Guardian, the SF Chronicle and other sources. Let me say first of all, that you are mistaken if you think the general public in California had anything whatsoever to do with the current mess that deregulation has created. The general public and their advocates such as TURN, consumerwatchdog.com and other consumer advocates were specifically excluded from any input whatsoever into the legislation that was architected by State Senator Steve Peace (D.-San Diego). You may wish to note that from 1994 to 1998, OTOH, Mr. Peace received $179,409 in contributions from power companies and power marketers, who were allowed to access the deliberations.
(Information source: Al Gonzales, President, Central Electric Co-op, Redmond, OR. 541.548.2144)
Re: Ca. electorate was convinced to build the electric supply industry structure (wall) they are about to hit. There is no avoiding that wall now.
As I stated above, the electorate was treated like a mushroom in this whole, tawdry affair. Kept in the dark, at first figuratively, and now literally, and fed a lot of horse$#!+. The only players who matter are the Sacratomato crowd and the utes, who will do battle for a long time to come. It's almost hysterical to see the lobbying being done by the power marketers to try to squeeze out the independent alternative energy producers. The financial squeeze on the independents is what precipitated the black-outs earlier this week. Leading me to this statement....
Re: I am also a died in the wool free marketer.
I am more in the Soros camp on this. It is my view that free markets, left to their own logic, inevitably run amok because of the inherent greed and grasping of the human animal. Left unchecked, free markets are ultimately destructive and unbalanced. Not that what we see in California could ever be described as a "free market". <w>
Re: FERC does not have a dog in this fight.
But, it does have a beef, from the Abrams' speech: Over the past two weeks, for example, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered power companies to rebate some $124 million to California utilities.
There is a great deal of disinformation surrounding this as you know, but somehow the FERC came up with an arbitrary figure of $273/Mwh as the tipping point for fair gain vs. windfall profit. This is, of course, about 800% of the going rate for power in December, 1999 ($32/Mwh). As a consumer, I'm a little taken aback that FERC allowed that a 799% price rise within one year was within the purview of fair compensation.
I really like the litany of conservation measures that you've come up with. One of the mystifying aspects of the demand cycle in California is that it is a known fact that in winter, peak demand occurs everyday at about 6 PM. I know this from watching the Cal ISO graphs. But I'll bet not one in ten California energy consumers is aware of the impact of peak shaving, and postponing energy use as you've proposed, such as water heating, clothes and dish washing, etc. to occur at the trough hours in the night. OTOH, every commercial and industrial user is keenly aware of this, I'm sure.
There I finally extingushed the fire your post sparked, sorry for the length. Unfortunately I mean everything, Ca. has troubles of it's own making ahead, they need to fix it, not the FEDS.
I agree and I see the LADWP
ladwp.com
model as one that hasn't been successfully gamed by the power marketers. <w>
Best, Ray :) |
