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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kevin Rose who wrote (372226)	3/17/2003 12:30:04 AM
From: Gordon A. Langston	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Get em all, including David Freeman, Davis's Energy Czar, once head of the LADWP. Amazing that public utilities in several states were players. The generating capacity was allegedly withheld by: * Submitting false reports to the California grid that generating units were unavailable due to mechanical reasons when plant records showed it was capable of normal operation. * Placing generating units on "reserve shutdown" status -- which is usually done for economic reasons -- when the California grid had declared a supply emergency. * Failing to offer all their electricity output for sale in the market during system emergencies. * Pricing their generating supply out of the market by bidding far above their actual costs. MARKET POWER Power generators often bid prices much higher after the California grid operator declared an emergency knowing that the ISO would need all available power "and would be willing to pay any price to get it," the state said. The behavior was so widespread that it was "the rule among suppliers, not the exception," California said. FAKE LOAD SCHEDULES Suppliers submitted fake load schedules to the California grid operator to increase scarcity and prices in the day-ahead markets, and move power into the "more easily manipulated" real-time market, the state said. Companies that allegedly used this strategy included Enron Corp <ENRNQ.PK>, Sempra Energy (nyse: SRE - news - people), B.C. Hydro's Powerex unit, Mirant, Dynegy, Reliant, Hafslund Energy, the state said. So did the municipal utilities owned by the cities of Anaheim, Glendale, Pasadena and Redding, it said. POWER SENT OUT OF STATE Suppliers created artificial scarcity by exporting "vast amounts" of electricity out of California, then importing the same power inside state lines to sell at higher prices, the state said. The strategy known as "megawatt laundering" or "ricochet trades" increased day-ahead market prices. Companies that allegedly used this technique included Enron, Powerex, Sempra, Mirant and Williams, the state said. Others which helped suppliers by temporarily "parking" power outside the state included Public Service Co. of New Mexico, PacifiCorp and the Snohomish municipal utility in Washington, it said. In other instances, pairs of companies -- Sempra and Dynegy, Coral Power and Glendale, Constellation and the Los Angeles Department of Water -- cooperated to execute these transactions, the state alleged. CONGESTION GAMES