California Power Crisis

[Engine 101]

Many if you who watch the news may know that the ENTIRE State of California is in the midst of a power crisis, Yesterday California went to Stage 3 which meant rolling blackouts, Our town was essentaily prepared once again today we are at a Stage 3 alert, Rolling blackouts are not scheduled for the Southern California area but the Northner California area is expiricing rolling blackouts, These blackouts will only affect Southern California Edison and Pacfic Gas and Electric customers, The reason for this shortage "DEREGULATION", Which is something I have no clue about

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Engine101
Tim Macias
[email protected]

[fjbfour]

A lot of blame is due to the State of California for not doing its homework before implementing deregulation in the worst way possible. Just as much to the "not in my backyard" types who have disallowed new generation plants in over ten years from being built anywhere in California. Still more lies in the people who live a wasteful lifestyle of extravagance (not trying to implicate all Californians here). We in the energy industry have seen this day coming to the West coast for over 15 years. It's no surprise, but no one would listen.

Like any disaster, it is a massive compilation of a bunch of stupid mistakes and ill-conceived plans. It was easily avoidable.

[This message has been edited by fjbfour (edited 01-17-2001).]

[This message has been edited by fjbfour (edited 01-17-2001).]

[Dalmatian90]

Not to leave out from the mix power-mongering PCs and servers in a high-tech boom.

Or companies like PG&E or SCE who, in my humble opinion, used the crisis earlier this year to try and play up fears of power shortages and allowed generators to extort them to emphasize the point. And found too little sympathy from the public and regulators too late to avert a financial crisis.

To be fair, there is some natural causes too -- low rain and snowfall in Pacific Northwest has reduced hydroelectric output from that area.

Now, this isn't just a California crisis. New England was fortunate this year from a mild summer (few days passed the 90 degree mark)...had it been it's normal hot & humid we may have very well seen rolling black outs ourselves...by this summer coming up new powerplants now under construction should be online giving us adequate power again.

Downtown areas are also at risk nationwide -- can't build a power plant there, can't stretch in more overhead lines...people keep buying more and bigger computers. Detroit Edison actually has a demonstration project running now that uses Liquid Nitrogen to super-cool the power lines running into downtown Detroit to increase their capacity!

[snowball]

Hey 101 don't you fret. I have a friend who is an HMFIC at PG&E He told me that if you live on the same grid as a Fire station, hospital, school, or police station you wont be selected for the Blackout Program. And for
fjbfour's info there have been numerous cogeneration plants built in the last ten years around the San Joaquin Valley, four within 30 miles or less from where I live. The problem with them shutting down is partially with the "not in my backyard" types
But here's a tidbit not many people know.
PG&E and Edison bought up all of the cogen-plants, laid off all of the workers,then left the plants to rot in the blistering heat and freezing cold of this valley.That was so they could try to monopolize the power industry in their areas.
There is also a MAIN FEED line located somewhere in Idaho that supplies most of the power to the north western states. Hoover dam supplies most of the rest. PG&E are basically just brokers and maintenance and builders for routes for the power. Kinda like CAL-TRANS they dont build the roads they just stake a claim on them and maintain them. Big Government at work. Please feel free to reply

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??? Did I say that ???

[URSULAFORHAN]

Well, we had a rolling black out yesterday AT our fire dept which is in Northern CA (I think because we are adjacent to a pulpmill). We ran off our generator for a couple of hours. Our dept. is used to power outages: once during a flood we went house to house charging everyone's refrigerator and freezer, as well as opening the station to the whole community so they could cook and bathe.

[Firediver]

My Father just retired from PG&E after 40 years. He stated it like this: The Feds allowed California to deregulate the power companies any way they chose. The State decided to force SCE and PG&E, and a few others to sell some of their generating plants. They now have to buy the energy that they once owned, and at huge increases in the cost but they cannot raise rates to compensate for the increase to them. So now, they are almost bankrupt, PG&E is on a day to day basis as far as staying in business. They have been buying the power at such a high rate, they cannot afford it. Anyone with any intelligence can see that you cannot run a business if you pay more for your product than you take in in revenue. Take a look at the stocks, PG&E was at 32, now it is at around $9. If you need to blame someone, blame the beurocrat(?) who came up with this plan on how to deregulate California Power.

[RJE]

Since when is is "deregulated" if they can't set the price for power at or above what it costs them. That's the bottom line: they only deregulated HALF the power industry.