Re: Questions from Detroiter on California power crisis

["Seth Sandronsky" <ssandron@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Tim and Charles:

Rolling blackouts in Jan. 2001 struck parts of Sacramento, where the
Sacramento Municipal Utility District provides electricity.

Regards,
Seth

Re: Questions from Detroiter on California power crisis
by Tim Bousquet
28 March 2001 01:04

> Is the power
> problem only affecting part of the state or the
> entire state?

Depends on what you mean by "the power problem." The
January blackouts hit only customers of PG&E and SoCal
Edison, but not those of the municipalized power
districts, of which there are about 40, the largest
being Los Angeles's. In the March blackouts, however,
the ISO has been asking the municipalized districts to
also be part of the rolling blackouts. There has been
some refusal to cooperate on the municipals' part, and
we haven't heard the end of this yet--not by a long
shot. This summer will be especially difficult, and it
wouldn't surprise me to see Governor Davis force the
matter in the corporations' favor.

Of course, even if some locales are able to avoid
blackouts, the entire citizenry is encumbered by about
$20 billion in bailout debt. The noise is that
ratepayers to the big companies will ultimately pay
for this, but that's not entirely clear. We'll see
what the reaction is to today's 40% rate hike.


> A few weeks ago I was watching HardBall on MSNBC. It
> has a definate republican or conservative edge/swing
> but they were discussing the power crisis in CA and
> I only caught the tale end of the discussion. But
> this discussion mirrored what I had read in the NY
> Times approx. a month ago; Basically that the
> legislators/regulators/CA government got in bed with
> the power industry and setup the new system which
> allowed the power companies to setup holding
> companies which then owned the affiliates that
> actually provided power in the state. They used the
> cash reserves form the affiliates to increase their
> holdings elsewhere and neglected to increase
> infrastructure, technological improvements etc.
> within the state of CA. Thus (in a tight nutshell)
> the power crisis.

Essentially correct.

> Not because there is no power

There's plenty of power. Last week I posted a SF
Chronicle article debunking the myth of an increase in
power usage, and harvey Rosenfield has since followed
up with a more in-depth report on his website--
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/.
There has been a small decline in in-state production
because after the companies devested themselves of
generators (part of deregulation) the new buyers had
to refurbish them, or so David Gallo claims. But
that's besides the point, it seems to me, because
while transmission companies may have to buy power
from out-of-state, market logic dictates that prices
everywhere should be going up. That's not the case.

but
> because they cannot deliver it to the people who
> need it in the lower portion of the state. They are
> supposedly building new power lines to transfer
> power south but they will not be complet!
> ed in time for this summer and possibly will take
> two years(?)

That's the propaganda. But consider that two years ago
the power demand was almost exactly what it was this
past January, and there were no blackouts. I haven't
seen any documentation that the few off-line generator
plants are only in the south, so the north-south line
doesn't really appear to be much of a problem. The
problem is obviously institutional, political, and
economic, and the mechanics of the situation are
trotted out to explain away that reality.



=====
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