Posted on 10/29/2002 4:01:36 AM PST by snopercod
NEW YORK -- The organization that runs California's electricity transmission system has substantiated Duke Energy Corp.'s claim that all of its generating capacity in the state was producing power, providing other services or unavailable because of predisclosed outages on May 8, 2001, undermining a charge that Duke kept capacity off line that day even as some customers had their power cut.
The California Independent System Operator, in an analysis undertaken at the request of a state senator and released late Friday, also raised broader questions about the report by the California Public Utilities Commission, which concluded last month that most of the state's blackouts and other power cuts could have been avoided if Duke, Mirant Corp. (NYSE:MIR - News) , Reliant Resources Inc. (NYSE:RRI - News) and joint ventures between Williams Cos. and AES Corp. (NYSE:AES - News) and Dynegy Inc. (NYSE:DYN - News) and Xcel Energy Inc. (NYSE:XEL - News) unit NRG Energy Inc. had generated all available power.
The ISO said it didn't have enough information to draw firm conclusions about the state commission's methods, but added that the commission appeared to have relied upon ISO outage data that the ISO itself had warned might be inaccurate. The ISO also said the commission may have made assumptions about ISO data that aren't consistent with actual market operations and may have failed to consider technical constraints governing individual generators and the grid as a whole.
A spokesman for the California Public Utilities Commission wasn't immediately available to comment.
Power prices soared and California electricity consumers suffered blackouts and other service interruptions during the energy crisis that gripped the West in 2000 and 2001. Generators have long argued that they produced record amounts of power during the crisis, which they attributed to a genuine energy shortage and California's poorly designed electricity market.
State Commission Report Claims Power Withheld
The commission's report challenged that argument, concluding that even if all mechanical outages claimed by California's in-state generators were taken at face value, those generators still kept idle available capacity that could have made power cuts unnecessary.
To bolster its conclusions about each specific generator, the report pointed to specific days in which power was cut while the generator kept available capacity off line.
The commission's report concluded that Duke had more than 800 megawatts of capacity available and unused on May 8, 2001. Duke disputed the point, saying the commission appeared to ignore that its Morrow Bay Unit 3 was in a prescheduled maintenance outage. The ISO confirmed that the unit was in a scheduled outage and said Duke's capacity was otherwise available. Some of that capacity was actually cut back at the ISO's request, the ISO said.
The ISO didn't comment on specific conclusions drawn in the commission's report about other generators, since it wasn't asked to do so by California state Sen. Joseph Dunn (D., Santa Ana), who requested the analysis. Each of the generators has previously rejected the commission's conclusions.
Agreement In Principle
Despite its reservations, the ISO said it agreed in principle with the commission's report, saying its own observations confirmed generators had withheld output, forcing the ISO to pay more for power than necessary.
Generators failed to run their plants as instructed during emergencies, engaged in outages that may not have been legitimate and failed to bid available power into the ISO market, contributing to a scramble for energy at the last minute, the ISO said.
The commission's report, however, failed to specifically mention factors that, if ignored, would affect its conclusions about how much capacity generators truly had available and whether it would have been of any use in heading off power cuts, the ISO said.
Those include constraints on a unit's ability to return to full power, differences between rated and actual capacity, transmission constraints, bad data, incorrect assumptions about how long units were out of service, fuel curtailments suffered by plant operators, regulations requiring units to remain available but off line as a back up in case other units fail, and the ISO's need at times to pay units, even when supplies in the aggregate were short, to cut back output to preserve the integrity of the grid, the ISO said.
"The CPUC may have used outage data that was useful for depicting outages on a macro level but which was not appropriate for investigation of unit-specific behavior during a specific subset of hours," the ISO said. "The ISO brought this data limitation to the CPUC's attention in several conversations and in at least one written exchange in July 2002."
-Andrew Dowell, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-4430; andrew.dowell@dowjones.com
At the direction of Davis for the purpose of deflecting blame for the 2001 crisis, the PUC wrote a political document based on nothing but wishful thinking. It was a hack job from the start and was timed to boost Davis in the polls when he was floundering.
I find it ludicrous that the ISO didn't know what was going down or did not review the PUC report before it was made public. I believe the ISO knew what was being done and purposefully allowed it to go forward. The ISO is no more independent from the Davis machine than the PUC is.
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It's a .pdf file, so you'll need Acrobat Reader... it's free, and chances are good you already have it on your computer. Try the link and see.
Print it using the printer-icon button in the Acrobat toolbar in your browser (not File|Print in your browser's menu). It's intended for double-sided printing using single pieces of paper-- no stapling needed if you do it that way, and saves trees! ;-) Print one side, then invert the paper and feed it through a second time for the second side. Fold, and sally forth to get out the vote!
Give this to friends, walk your neighborhood, take it to stores, give a wad of 'em to your school, hand some out at your house of worship, at clubs, at stores and small businesses...
Let's retire Gray Davis!
Let's show the media and RINOs that "It's the base, stupid!"
Let's show Gray Davis that money can't buy him love ...or re-election!
Freepers and RLC activists can claim considerable credit for nominating Bill Simon, so now let's elect him!
Let's see if I understand. Cal ISO says that Duke is correct that it did not withold electricity on the specific dates indicated, contrary to what the CPUC said. However, the Cal ISO does agree with teh CPUC that generators withholding generation were what casused the problems.
Isn't politics wonderful. The Cal ISO when asked if the CPUC is lying said that the CPUC was wrong in its facts, but that the Cal ISO supported their politicially correct conclusion.
FERC needs to get goind and dismantle the Cal ISO'sleadership.
Which brings up the question of exactly why they issued the statement in the first place. I figure that Duke recently made a substantial contribution to the Davis campaign.
Gawd, I'm getting cynical about this...
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