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Pastimes : The California Energy Crisis - Information & Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zeuspaul who wrote (275)	5/6/2001 8:23:33 PM
From: DavesM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1715

The truth is we are SHORT all forms of energy!! Refiners are producing at +90% capacity. Because of current pollution and environmental laws, there hasn't been a refinery built in the United States over the past 25 years (or so I've heard). Because of these same regulations, refiners will not expand capacity significantly at the refineries they now have (Currently they don't have to meet all standards because they are grand fathered, but new capacity constructed must meet current standards). Because of this any disruption in production (fire, or flood), prices of refined products will spike - much like electricity prices. re: the market does not build in excess capacity. It wants to be lean and mean...just in time. There are "peakers" which only are supposed to fire up when the grid is short. In fact, I believe that the amount of time that peakers are allowed to run are (or were) limited by law.

To: Zeuspaul who wrote (275)	5/7/2001 12:31:17 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1715

Hi Zeuspaul, Re: I see a fatal flaw in the move to market juice...the market does not build in excess capacity. It wants to be lean and mean...just in time. Just a minor note on "excess" capacity. In 1990, well before deregulation was in vogue, the CPUC required California's private utilities, such as PG&E, to maintain a 17% spinning reserve* above and beyond the demand on the grid. Today, when we look at typical spinning reserve, it reaches the critical Stage III alert at 1.5% spinning reserve. Your comment on the market running too lean for the needs of a stable system is very well considered. Re: Peakers - In Washington state, Tacoma Power will be running a series of diesel generators over the summer that had been mothballed due to air quality issues over the past couple of summers. We will find that a lot of air quality rules will be bent this summer for the sake of adequate capacity on the grid. Not that this will prevent blackouts during the worst of summer weather. The CAISO has concluded that blackouts are simply inevitable. Re: Biomass - This energy source is one that seems fatally flawed. In the first instance, there simply isn't enough of the stuff to matter. At best, less than 1% of the nation's energy requirements could possibly be satisfied with biomass. Secondly, in order to utilize biomass, we will need to mine the forests of otherwise better used nutrients, or plant millions of acres with suitable feedstock crops. In both cases, wildlife and the environment suffer great degradation. Biomass utilization and conservation of the natural environment are anathema, IMHO. JM2C, Ray :) *Spinning reserve is the amount of generation capacity that is on-line and available at any one instant beyond the actual load on the grid.