Whoa! I can see somebody at the Gov's office trying to supress the announcement from being sent to the media, but not being allowed to totally supress the announcement. Honest folks at the ISO wouldn't allow that.
It will be interesting to see if this is a big story on the California evening TV news and what the papers say tomorrow morning. Depending on how the media play things this could be a disaster for Gov. Davis. I expect that if there is spinning going on the LA Times will lead with a story that blames Reliant, Mirant, and Calpine with trying to extract revenge on the poor people of California.
As someone who has sat in a dispatchers chair at an electric utility (even if it was only for a short time during a strike), I would like to say that one doesn't order dispatchers to do anything. A dispatcher will do what their Standard Operating Procedures dictate and that there own judgement and experience warrants. They will move heaven and earth to make sure the lights stay on.
Yes, I do know what happens if load exceeds generation and nothing is done. A New York, east coast style cascading blackout. The real hero there was a dispatcher who pulled the plug and didn't let the system take his generation down. That is what helped get things back because without that dispatcher there would have been a much more massive "black start" condition.
If the folks at the dispatch chairs at the Cal ISO are like any of the dispatchers I know, anyone at the ISO who would try to block emergency action would soon be ordered out of the control center.
You are absolutely right that tomorrow will be higher loads. Hopefully, some of the unplanned outages will be fixed by then. That is the real story to follow as well as all the folks in neighboring states who are cranking up hydro and bringing on-line thermal projects.
Tomorrow should be a very interesting day to read newspapers and to periodically check the Cal ISO system status page.
Perhaps the Cal ISO system page might be one of the first "unneccessary" expenditures of electricity to be shut down?
-PJ
One would hope. Here is my concern:
First, if neither a Stage 2 or Stage 3 Alert was called, then as far as I can tell they are already violating procedures. That indicates the potential for pressure.
Second, it would seem to me that a quick failure of a single piece of equipment could cause that 1% dip in production capacity; i.e., that 1% is too close without shutting something down. Here is where I am ignorant and why I flagged you knowing that you had direct experience.
Thus (if my assumptions are correct), at that level of criticality I have a hard time believing that the procedures call for holding fast.
That means we might well be justified in asking if there was an order.
Under such circumstances, I don't have a problem envisioning a dispatcher going too close to the edge, especially if there is money in it.