Board-Ansicht
Mix-Ansicht- Lange totgeschwiegen; immer noch Topaktuell. Gute Nacht - XERXES, 18.07.2002, 23:51
Lange totgeschwiegen; immer noch Topaktuell. Gute Nacht
California power woes could return
Grid operator warns of power-plant delays
By Scott Thurm and Mitchel Benson
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 18 — The blackouts are gone for now, but California’s power market remains deeply troubled and there are signs the state could soon be facing a renewed energy crisis.
CONSIDER:
The two biggest utilities still aren’t creditworthy, and state government continues to buy the bulk of California’s power.
State and federal regulators can’t agree on how to fix the flawed system. Wednesday, frustrated federal regulators ordered the state’s grid operator to replace its board, increased the price cap on regional power sales and established a new system to detect price-gouging. But a ranking state official said the new price cap “could cost consumers billions of dollars,” and called the board restructuring “nonsense.”
The state is renegotiating long-term contracts with power suppliers that it thinks took unfair advantage of the crisis by locking in high prices.
Voluntary conservation efforts are easing as blackout memories recede, and important new conservation programs remain stalled.
Energy-generating companies, unsure of the state’s plans and facing a credit squeeze fueled by questionable business practices in California and elsewhere, are canceling and delaying planned power plants.
The problems became apparent last week, when the operator of the state’s power grid declared a “Stage 2” emergency for the first time in a year and asked big industrial users to curtail energy use. The state averted rolling blackouts, but may not be so lucky next time.
In a June 14 report to federal regulators, the grid operator, formally known as the California Independent System Operator, warned of an “alarming trend” of power-plant delays and cancellations. Even as some new plants come on line, the report said, some older plants are being retired.
‘PROBABLY WORSE OFF’
“We ain’t seen the end of this yet,” says Allan Vallow, director of the electric utility for the central California city of Lodi. The spate of plant delays and cancellations mean California is “probably worse off than when this started,” he says.
State officials and some experts disagree. Claudia Chandler, a spokeswoman for the California Energy Commission, the state’s energy policy and planning agency, says new power plants and continued conservation helped the state cope with near-record demand amid triple-digit temperatures and an unexpected plant outage last week. “It was a pretty phenomenal test of the system and everything worked together,” she says.
By the end of July, energy companies will have opened power plants capable of generating 4,600 megawatts of electricity — enough for roughly 4.6 million homes — over the previous 14 months. Officials estimate that continuing conservation efforts saved an additional 2,000 megawatts. But conservation is slipping: Peak energy use rose 3.3% in June from a year earlier, eroding some of the 14% savings from conservation at the height of the energy crisis.
California will likely need to import as much as 15% of its power at peak demand. The energy commission, in a February report, said that by 2005 growing demand would likely force California back to “tight supplies, price volatility, reliability concerns, and consumer dissatisfaction.” The commission expects plants capable of generating more than 6,000 megawatts of power to open in the next three years, but Ms. Chandler says little progress is being made at some sites. In June alone, 1,441 megawatts of planned generating capacity were put on hold, according to the ISO.
Mirant Corp., for example, has cut its planned spending on big projects this year by roughly $2 billion. The opening of its 530-megawatt power plant in Contra Costa County, east of San Francisco, has been delayed almost two years to June 2005.
CONFUSING SIGNALS
Energy-company executives complain that the state is sending confusing signals on its willingness to pay for new power plants. Closely held Delta Power, Morristown, N.J., spent more than $65 million last year preparing to build a 180-megawatt power plant in Chino. But Delta scrapped the project in December after the state Department of Water Resources, which is buying most of California’s electricity, balked at signing a long-term contract.
Some energy experts say the plant cancellations aren’t cause for alarm. Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute in Berkeley, says there is no evidence that the state is suffering from “underinvestment,” but the state needs to quickly establish its restructured market and implement conservation programs.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission set some new rules Wednesday, raising to $250 per megawatt hour, from $91.87 previously, the price cap for power sales across the West beginning Oct. 1. The agency also created a new day-ahead electricity market, and established a new computerized modeling system to detect and reject excessively high power bids.
Even so, FERC Chairman Pat Wood III said “the long-term fixes” to California’s market “are not here.... I don’t think we’re out of the woods here yet.”
FERC also ordered the ISO to scrap its governing body — all appointees of Gov. Gray Davis — in favor of a two-tier structure with an independent board and an advisory panel of stakeholders. But ISO Chairman Michael Kahn said, “The truth is FERC wants to control the ISO and they don’t like that California controls the ISO.”
Copyright © 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
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