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

To: portage who wrote (503)	6/14/2001 8:59:39 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1715

Portage... you can provide statistics, but we know statistics can be misleading. You can claim that these plants have been shut down more for more hours this year than in the past, but what if those plants were kept operating past their normal maintenance shut down period, deferring that maintenance to a later period, in order to provide more power to the state? Wouldn't that reduce the total quantity of hours of downtime from the past 3 years, thus skewing your average? And if it came to the point that the plant manager could no longer defer a maintenance shutdown, and the fact that not performing that previous maintenance may have caused more damage, could that not explain why so many plants are being taken off line?? So you can rattle off the stats, but it's important to look at the reality behind the numbers. And the energy sector is no more "fixed" than is the computer operating system market (aka: MSFT). But if you want to solve the price fixing problem, then encourage more competition and open up generation plant construction. Either that, or reduce demand so these guys are left in the position where they have no one to sell their excess power to. Or maybe, rather than foolishly buying power on the expensive spot market, enter into long-term contracts for power which are beneficial to BOTH PARTIES. The buyer knows he's purchased at a fixed price, and the seller knows that he has a guaranteed buyer and the capital to lock in long-contracts for his fuel (natural gas.. etc) so he's not caught in a squeeze. Hawk

To: portage who wrote (503)	6/14/2001 10:20:21 AM
From: DavesM	Respond to of 1715

IMHO You should be very careful about statements made by the PUC or for that matter State Officials. There is a whole lot of hand waving and ass covering going on. For instance, of the 15,000 MW of power generation that you mention is out of service (April 2001), how much of that is from qualified facilities (alternative energy producers) that have shut down because they have not been paid since the fall of 2000 (these producers are supposed to provide 25% of the State's electricity - normally, when they get paid)? Also, many natural gas powered peak power plants are LIMITED BY LAW in the number of hours they can be in operation. There are penalties for over producing, even now with the governor using emergency power to lift the limit, plants will have to pay a "fee" for the Nitrogen Oxides and Carbon MOnoxides produced. Does the EPA, have similar regulations and penalties as the State for heavy polluters? You mention AES and Enron. Did you know that Enron claims that last summer they offered to sell CA (utilities?) power for about $50 per megawatt, the catch being they wanted a five year contract. Did you know that AES claims to have lost money in California last year (was even addressed at one of the quarterly CCs)? It seems as though, yes AES's power plants in CA were down alot. These plants are probably over 50 years old, and had difficulty staying in operation. MY understanding, is that AES has contract to supply electricity to Williams, which Williams resells. Because the plants were down so much last summer, AES had to purchase power from the open market to meet their obligation with Williams (at a fixed lower price), thus a loss from CA operations.