California's zero emission rules will bankcrupt everybody

Hi...

Good grief, consider the source. Smoke and mirrors from double-speak spin-doctoring politicians.

I'm getting on in years, and easily confused, but no bad that I can't figure out what "partial zero" is. Oh wait, I really can't :)

I might be able to with the 10% zero is. 10% of zero is zero, so... Ah heck, I give up.

And I'm 110% sure :)

Happy holidays, everybody.

Ken

That was weird.

As an IS worker for a Southwetern electric utility I can say authoritatively that California's power problems were caused by a combination of their shortsightedness and neglect of electric infrastructure - no conspiracy theory needed.

You recall California was in the forefront of electric deregulation. They made some rookie mistakes and compounded it with political twists. Most critical was that California power plants were not allowed to sell to California. With the results of that folly known, FERC now has national rules that power producers and power providers must be entirely separate and unaffiliated - a huge improvement over California's approach. The company I work for has split in two, as most electric utilities have. I work for the larger company, the "energy services" company, while the generation company of the same name and same parent company is "generation." I work in "shared services" and am what FERC calls a "conduit" employee. I face serious federal prison time if I leak any information between the two companies that isn't available to all US electric producers and providers.

California compounded their error when their Public Utilities Commission prevented the power providers from entering into long term contracts with power producers, thereby forcing electricity to be bought on much more expensive spot and short term markets. The PUC prevented the providers from passing on the increased costs to their customers, bringing both SCE and PG&E to the very brink of bankruptcy. Both were put on a "cash only" basis with power producers, which guaranteed electricity shortages in California.

The transmission corridors between California and neighboring states have also been neglected several decades too many, as has the transmission infrastructure within California itself. There is actually enough generation capacity here in the West, but not enough power can get to the population centers at peak load. Funny how nobody wants 750 KV transmission lines in their back yard.

I guess the truth is a lot more boring than the conspiracy theories, though.

Mike

So....., whats the latest on this from 2002?

News Item:

ASHINGTON -- Documents showing Enron Corp. sought to rig energy prices in California escalated pressure Tuesday for a wider investigation of energy market manipulation, sending tremors through the industry.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Tuesday ordered all energy trading companies to preserve documents dealing with their tactics, including internal memos. The action came a day after the release of an internal memo detailing Enron's trading ploys, which said other companies had adopted similar tactics.

Despite denials of any market manipulation, energy companies saw their stocks plunge as much as 17% in anticipation of increased scrutiny of their operations. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers called for a criminal investigation, more congressional hearings and new regulation of the kind of energy trades Enron conducted. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer expressed confidence that federal regulators would "vigorously" investigate the new revelations.

The Justice Department said in a statement that its Enron task force "is continuing to actively investigate a wide variety of matters concerning the conduct of Enron Corp. and individuals and entities associated with it."

FERC on Monday released memos detailing strategies used by Enron traders to artificially inflate energy prices during California's energy crisis in 2000-2001, when Enron traders operated in a newly deregulated market.

FERC officials declined to comment, citing the continuing investigation.

Some of the trading schemes discussed in the Enron memos could answer a long-standing mystery in the California power crisis, said Robert McCullough, an Portland, Ore.-based energy consultant.

In winter 2001, the California Independent System Operator--the agency running the power grid under deregulation--called for rolling blackouts in Northern California, citing a shortage brought on by congested power lines serving the area.

However, the Bonneville Power Administration, which co-owns lines from Oregon into Northern California, insisted that there was a large amount of unused capacity, McCullough said.

The newly released memos detail one Enron strategy that called for giving Cal-ISO false signals about Enron's anticipated "load," or the amount of power its customers would require.

The idea, roughly, was that on a day of high demand, Enron would exaggerate the amount of power its customers would need. Cal-ISO, worried about meeting demand, would then offer to pay a premium to energy providers that agreed to send extra power.

Enron would readily comply by reducing its usage--reaping the benefit of cutting back power it never really needed in the first place.

"Did this happen during the blackouts?" McCullough asked. "I don't know, but by God, we need to investigate," he said.

Enron officials had roundly denied any market manipulation, or "gaming," during the energy crisis. The Houston company, under new leadership since its collapse last fall, released the documents to federal investigators Monday but said it could not vouch for their accuracy.

Ah jeeeez!

Want me to post an article on where those along a California powerline upgrade are suing to stop it?

You believe what you want... when you're half-right, that's apparently enough for you.

If you want to hold util's feet to the fire, you dont go in half-cocked with half-baked mantra's and truisms.

Sure. I'd be interested in that.

How is that apparent? Why the insults?

Sounds reasonable. Did I post a mantra? Half baked truism?

Bill you may be bright, but you type like a moron. And thanks, all of you, for cross-posting this lovely thread in auto newsgroups, where it's so roundly appreciated.

Both at the same time. Hmmm - not sure what that means. Thanks for your wisdom.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Do you suppose 10% zero is like a partial erection?? ;>)

OK so do tell - what happened to thise regulations?

Bill your attempt to generate sympathy for insurance companies is a scream.

Name one single insurance company that went bankrupt, or even declared a loss for that year, as a result of 911, and when the twin towers dropped that was probably the largest single hit in claims that the insurance industry ever had in history.

Ted

Generate sympathy for insurance companies? I fail to see where I did that. You can't force a company to do business in your state, so you, right or wrong, have to play ball with them to some degree - at least make it conducive for them to do business in your state.

CA legislated some unreasonable requirements on the industry, and the industry simply exercised its right to take their business elsewhere. That's not sympathy for them - it's just life in a non-socialist world.

You'd have a tough time convincing many people that an insurance company should be forced to do business where they are not allowed to adjust rates based on a person's driving history, i.e., charge everyone the same rates and be forced to insure the unsafe driver. And unless someone is going to try to construe that to say that I'm saying that the insurance companies ought to be able to cancel people or raise their rates for arbitrary reasons, that's not what I'm saying.

It sounds like a cliché, but that truly is a non-sequitur. Regardless of how slimy you may thing the insurance industry is, that doesn't mean you can tell them that to do business in your state they have to do it under unreasonable rules (which CA did) and then insist that they do business with you.

I don't understand the apparent prevalent thinking that, on a given issue, if you speak against one side, then by default that means you are a supporter of the other side. You can see simultaneously see the stupidity of CA and the greediness of the energy industry or the insurance industry at the same time. My point has been that if you know that a given industry will rape you if given half a chance, then don't pass legislation that will give them excuses to do so, or in the case of the insurance industry, don't make the rules under which they would have to operate insane and then criticize them in that case when they tell you "No thanks - we'll take our business elsewhere".

Just one more example of CA's stupidity: Pass laws in the name of protecting "Mother Earth" that people can build houses in forrested areas, but make it illegal to clear brush from around the property, and then expect my sympathy when a small spark results in your houses burning down in an entire neighborhood. Typical California.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Funny you should ask. FERC investigated 55 electric service providers, producers and "power brokers" (wholesalers) in regards to the runaway market in California in 2000.

The paragraphs \45\ 29 through \49\33 do a good job of explaining how the California deregulated electric market was set up and how it was expected to operate. Pay particular attention to the requirement that electricity was to be bought no earlier than the day before use, which offered slightly lower prices when there was a lot of excess capacity (and a form of gaming in itself) but left California scrambling for the highest priced scraps of capacity when load was highest.

The most serious allegations were against Enron, and (IIRC) in the end Enron was the only company hit with sanctions, although two or three others were ordered to refund significant amounts they had collected

There was never any evidence of collusion, which would have been very serious indeed. As it was, the FERC determinations were a nail in Enron's already sealed casket.

Mike

My current favorite example of California institutional stupidity was from our vacation that included a day at Universal Studios. At one point I ducked into a shop to escape the outrageous sound level of a band playing on the central avenue of the theme park. I noticed a bright placard on a display of mugs, and looking closer I saw it was for compliance with some initiative that required them to identify the glaze on the outside of the mugs as containing lead, which was known to the state of California to cause cancer or something like that. I vowed not to gnaw on the outside of the mugs, but remembered that outside the door were sound levels known to be damaging to hearing. And now Universal Studios is reportedly to ban trans-fats. Sigh....

Mike

It's children that tend to "gnaw" on things. Odd that you would cite "institutional stupidity" when you aren't sure ("cancer or something like that") of the dangers. Much of the imported ceramics (drinking utensils for example) contain high amounts of lead and there is a connection between lead in the blood during pregnancy and impaired brain development. California is not the only state with this particular type of "initiative" (law).

Yes indeed, but California sees fit not to take any effective action, but only to warn of a mysterious risk and to quantify it far more vaguely than I did, leaving the public no better off than they were but merely more anxious and confused. Would the lead be absorbed through the skin of the hand? What action should the public take to deal with the supposed danger? Are people in other states suffering from not knowing they are at risk unless they take unspecified action? Simultaneously, a few yards away people were definitely suffering progressive hearing damage en masse in the simple pursuit of trying to get from one end of the facility to the other. Warn of vague potential dangers but do nothing, then ignore well-understood injurious conditions. Make sense to you?

Personally, I am rather well versed in the dangers of heavy metals - particularly lead, mercury, and arsenic. I even knew of the toxicity of polonium before it ever made the news. (Approximately as radio-toxic as radium, it is roughly 100 billion times as toxic as cyanide.) I also know that, despite the warning on the sign, cancer is not a major risk of lead exposure... the neuro effects are much graver. And I know that lead glazes are federally prohibited on the interior of food vessels because acidic foods can leach the lead out, but the outside of food vessels may be lead glazed because the risk was judged to be low by more knowledgable people than I. California merely took the opposite approach, inviting the voting public of uncertain education to weigh in on yet another technical issue.

No offense, but this struck me as the kind of primer I hear pitched to try and hook me for the upcoming news. :) ("stay tuned, details next hour")

Pet peeve of mine.

Any thoughts on the Thimerosal in vaccines linked to autism?

LOL, you and Bill seem to have a distinct anti California bias. To your defense, we *did* just re-elect Arnold. But its not only the voters that are of "uncertain education." We have term limits because we apparently believe that on the job "education" leads to *certain* dishonesty.

Now where will that hydrogen be produced?

-Leaving the pollution there.

No - just anti-stupidity bias.

Yep - people in CA are wising up some (finally got enough pissed off is more like it). It took a while for them to dig themselves into a hole, and it will take a while to dig themselves out - remarkable progress has been made thanks to Arnold. But he can't stop all the stupid legislation

- but he can - and has - vetoed some of it. So yeah - you're right - things are looking up.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Getting ever more OT... ;-)

I am opposed to mercury compounds for ingestion, in any quantity. Mercury has been known as a cumulative poison for longer than I've been alive and the effects are too well known.

That said, we do know the effects of mercury poisoning at all sorts of levels. Mostly we know the effects of compounds that introduce mercury into the body - nasty things like methyl mercury. Those effects have never been linked with autism. Is that to say that a specific mercury compound can't have unique effects? Not at all. But... it has been around as the external antiseptic Merthiolate and I used it a few times when I was a kid. (Explains a lot, maybe?) WHO finds no evidence yet that it is toxic in the doses used in vaccines.

Bottom line - still worth watching, but not my responsibility.

I am a former Californian; moved to Arizona in 1974. I have about the same view of the place as I did then - there is probably the same ratio of intelligent people to screwy people there as anywhere else, but in California the screwy people are more cohesive and form a significant voting block. Here they tend to fight among themselves while reasoned points of view remain cohesive. Also, corruption is more open here in Arizona, so actually getting things done in order that they might generate wealth to be skimmed is a priority