California power crisis - technical or political?

What power crisis?

Vote Democrat and the whole USA will be Californicated.

...Jim Thompson

One could easily argue that decisions to build power generation and transmission equipment are entirely political and economic. So _any_ problem with the grid is political/economic.

But that would be sophistry.

The problem is that you folks need to harness Gerbil Power, and put generators on all those wheels in all those cages in all those little girls' bedrooms across CA.

You forgot the third contributing factor..transmission line capacity. Other than that, the answer is an unqualified "YES".

:Hi everyone, : :A colleague of mine was claiming that california's power crisis isn't :actually due to a lack of generating capacity, but is actually :political/economic in nature. Any thoughts? Thanks

In a roundabout way, all energy crises have some political decision making behind them. Usually, and possibly in the case of California, the government might be giving in to public opposition surrounding new energy supply infrastructure projects. Of course, delaying new energy projects will simply increase the imperative to get them started somewhere down the track, but by then it could be too late to prevent many businesses going belly up in the mean time.

eg.

Agreed. Too much political power is a bad idea.

You can monitor California's power situation at:

If there are any alerts, they will go out via the EDIS system.

Ross Herbert wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

"The terminal was to be built about 23km off Malibu. Residents, including several celebrities, said it would be an eyesore and pollute the air."

What did the scientific and technical people say...? ((It's a moot question - I know that large numbers of my fellow countrymen think all scientists are eitehr evil, or highly suspect, whereas people who are famous merely for being famous are magically made omniscient by virtue of their fame =>:-p ))

In a word, DEREGULATION. Most of California's power woes can be traced to the wave of deregulation that has swept American politics in the last 25 years.

It sounds so good, get government off of the backs of industry and free them to work in the market system and all will be well. They will work to provide the best service at the lowest rates and strive to benefit their customers. Market forces will right everything.

Reality is somewhere else. Corporations work on greed, avarice and short term profit motives and do what ever it takes to maximize the bottom line. If they can shut down a power plant keeping supplies tight, they do it and that is exactly what they did.

The wave of deregulation also caused the mortgage and banking crisis we are now in for exactly the same reasons. Make a buck and don't give a shit how you make it or who gets screwed. That's the American way.

Regulation is like traffic lights, annoying sometimes but absolutely necessary for the smooth, safe, controlled flow of traffic. Without them chaos ensues and that, simply put is what happened in California.

But California never deregulated. The Enron debacle resulted from greater, stricter, more intrusive regulation.

Cheers, James Arthur

As I understand it, we, the Californicators, voted to "deregulate" (allowed to trade power on the open market, but still had caps on what they could sell it to the public for) the power industry back in the mid 1990s. Prices skyrocketed in San Diego a few years later. During the power crisis a few years back, there was ample generation capacity, but the industry said that the units were off-line for maintenance. Energy speculation, ala Enron and Reliant, was part of the blame. Our fine governer Davis signed some pretty horrid long term energy agreements.

So, how much of our petroleum price increases is due to excess trading/speculation?

-- Mark

That's why we (Arizona) passed an initiative forbidding sale of electricity outside the state for less than the in-state rate... sock it to the Californicators.

Likewise we control the water in the Colorado River ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Not an open market, but--by law--a specific, single, state-run market.

The intent was to create a public distribution infrastructure, then have producers / suppliers compete to deliver on it. Consumers would thus get the benefit of providers competing for their business.

But it was brain-dead from the start.

California's "deregulation" leading to the Enron debacle required a) utilities to sell their generating plants and b) become retailers of energy which c) they were required to buy daily, on a government-created spot market, d) at spot prices, e) and sell at fixed prices set by the California Public Utility Commission.

Electricity is used the moment it's created and there's not a lot spare to be had. The result was that Enron could buy and withhold a small chunk and make everyone else frantic to cover their customer's needs, causing a daily panic. Enron could then sell to desperate buyers at a handsome profit.

Long-term supply contracts, which normally provide a great deal of stability and predictability, were expressly forbidden by the new law.

When their price of fuel increased ~500-1,000%, the utilities applied to the CPUC for an emergency 20% rate increase. Application denied. (rough numbers here, don't quote me.)

What could possibly be more regulatory or meddlesome than forcing a company to buy at market rates, but sell at regulated rates BELOW their cost?

Cheers, James Arthur

I find your claim extraordinary. Such claims require equivalent backup.

Some of it, at least. So does various utility districts in California, and Nevada. And Mexico has some water rights to the Colorado river as well.

On Aug 5, 3:10 am, James Arthur wrote: [....]

This is what you have to do if you are converting a government regulated monopoly into a free market. If you don't you will have exactly one company that controls everything from generation to distribution. Allowing that would have left a insurmountable barrier to entry into the market and wouldn't have been deregulation at all. It would have just put the authority to regulate into private hands. The results would have been a quicker disaster if it wasn't done.

Deregulating the power utility was one of the dumber ideas. Things like the power grid more or less have to be monopolies. It is one of the places where local optimization takes you away from the global optimum.