Are you doing anything to reduce your energy consumption? Have you been hit with a blackout yet? Are you angry? Do you think we had this coming to us, since we've all been ignoring fuel shortages for years? Do you think it's just big business and government dicking us over? And do you think it will be resolved in time for summer?

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2001

Answers

We got a big bill two months ago and I told my spouse and housemate we should start conserving to save money, which we did. We turned out lights in rooms we weren't using, turned down the heater at night. Most evenings the three of us hang out in the living room so that cuts down on the number of lights we need to keep on. And a lot of evenings we have a fire in the fireplace - we've got a stove insert so it's pretty efficient though it makes the air polluted. You can't have everything.

We've had blackouts at home and where I work but they came at times when they weren't too big of a hassle.

I think they are dicking with us. It's not a shortage of power as much as a shortage of money to pay for power. Power isn't a finite resource like old growth redwoods; they make it. I think they're trying to soften us up so we won't say no to power plants they want to build, including nuclear ones.

I'm mad at the way they build houses in California with the minimum of insulation - there are ways to keep your house warm or cool that don't involve power. I'm mad at people who don't think they should have to conserve. I'm also mad at businesses who don't think they should have to conserve. I know they need lights for security, but every shopping center doesn't have to be lit up all night.

It's like gasoline - nobody wants to be wise about using it until they have to pay more. Conservation just makes sense even if it's not a finite resource.

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2001

Take it from a Republican who campaigned for Richard Nixon. Price controls cause scarcity. They caused scarcity in Hamarubi's time, In Nixon's time, and they are causing scarcity in California's electric supply. California's "deregulation" scheme involves large amounts of price control on the final product, as well as a top down command approach to supply, so the shortage could easily have been foreseen. I've only been looking at this situation for the last few weeks, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that economically knowable people saw this coming years ago.

Even Paul Samuelson finally gave up on price controls, but if you want to learn a bit of the history of the chimera of price controls, read "Famous Financial Fiascos" by John Train. It's a funny book about economics. Really!

Jim

PS: I saw Governor Davis frothing at the mouth, babbling something about RICO and putting guards in powerplants. Do people in California really think that making the generation of electricity a crime will cause people to generate more electricity?

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2001

Yep, the California electricity crisis is definitely the obvious and inevitable result of price controls.

What gets me is who the moronic public points the finger at. First they say it's the electric company's fault. Right. Like the electric company can keep on buying electricity for 30 cents and selling it at 4 cents forever. Yeah, that'll work.

Well, then it's the generating company's fault. Wrong again. The producers have to buy gas to generate electicity. Since gas is up electricity must be up as well. They can't afford to operate at a loss either.

Well, then it must be the gas companies. They're overcharging! Wrong again. Gas is bought and sold on the open market. It's a simple matter of supply and demand.

No, the culprit here is the price controls. What I don't understand is why they don't allow electricity prices to rise to their proper levels. Isn't that the obvious solution here? Make the damn public pay 30 cents for 30 cents worth of electricity, instead of 4.

But what solution do the politicians come up with? The government can buy the electricity and sell it to the utilities at a loss. Why? I mean, as a very short term solution (like, two weeks), maybe. But in the long term no way. Where does the government get its money? From the people. Why not let the people pay directly for the electricity they actually use?

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2001

Oh get real guys, take a little bit deeper look than that. The price control issue is exactly what the utility companite want you to see. Then realise that those price caps were set WELL in excess of what the market rate was at the time when it was implemented.

I agree that the easiest answer is to release the price controls because they aren't achieving their intended purpose (which was to prevent the utilities from immediatly gouging the customer base for the cost of the enforced sale of generation facilities). But that doesn't answer the real issue which is the real energy shortage, not the one currently being (intentionally or not) manufactured.

The real energy shortage has been looming on the California horizon for 10 years. After failing to persuade any power company to invest in generation facilities the freemarketers looked to deregulation to encourage investment (I still fail to see the logic there). Now here we are with a small handfull of out of state corporations controlling a majority of the generation facilities that mysteriously go down for maintennance at the same time.

The natural gas issue is also very similar in that it was so plentiful through the last decade that the speculators had little interest in tapping more reserves.

It smells like profit taking to me. Not that that is wrong, but don't expect the public sector to be there to bail the companies out.

Jeremy

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

Yes, Jeremy, those nasty utilities want to draw our attention to the fact that they are being forced to sell electricity below cost. And your point is what? Perhaps you can enlighten us as to how they can continue to do that and stay in business.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

I have no idea what's causing the crisis, but I have to admit that I'm secretly somewhat pleased. It's always seemed a bit overconfident of us (me included) to see energy as an infinite resource. Maybe the silver lining of this particular mess will be a push for energy efficiency and renewable energy sources.

What do you all think? Is this going to result in any long term changes in how consumers and government see our energy future? Or will the whole thing blow over in a few months and we'll all go back to our old habits?

No blackouts here yet, but I'm trying to spend less time with the computer on.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

The point being that I'm not going to lose any sleep over a company either so mismanaged or with such little foresight as to not see the economic peril of getting what they asked for. Remember these deregulation laws were written by the freemarket polititions.

A lot of people are quick to blame our Dem. governor who would rather keep his hands in his pockets than interfere, but it isn't his mess he now has to fix.

J

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

I think it's a little unfair to blame utility companies for not building generation for ten years. They were told years ago that deregulation was on the political horizon, and that as a result, they would be legally required to get out of the generation business, and that any capital costs they incurred building new generation wouldn't necessarily be reimbursed. Honestly, what would YOU do? More to the point, utility companies weren't the advocates for deregulation people seem to think. I remember when my husband (who used to work for PG&E) went to a meeting between utility VPs and state legislators, and the utility execs were told, essentially, "Deregulation is going to happen and if you fight it we will make sure that your shareholders are forced to pay for all of the costs of building generation over the last fifty years that we promised would be covered by consumers." Well, okay then.

So the utility said, "Well, fine. We're deregulating, and we'll sell off all our generation (to a holding company, in the case of Diablo, since who else is going to buy a nuclear plant), in exchange for which power prices will be set at a few cents above current cost until the old power plants are paid off." And that all worked fine until the cost of generation shot through the roof, but the price cap hadn't changed.

I do think that there's some gaming of the system by generators, who do seem to all go off-line at the same time, namely, when there appears to be a shortage. However, at this point, I can't blame them. It takes years, if not decades, to make back the cost of buying or building a power plant, and the response of California's government to shortages has been to threaten to take over plants, or to send regulators around to question all maintenance. I think generators are responding to the threat of losing all possibility of making money in the future by attempting to make as much as possible now. It's a very stupid game of brinkmanship.

All that said, the most interesting phenomenon to me is that California is really the only deregulated energy market having these kinds of problems. Other deregulated states and countries aren't having shortages, and have seen prices go down. That says to me that it's not deregulation per se that's the problem, it's the way that the state of California enacted deregulation. The legislature and PUC tried to do too much, too fast, without thinking about the possibility of shortages, and now the whole state is suffering.

We're currently in France, which is planning to deregulate the generation of energy along with the European market, following as much as possible the example set by the UK, which has an effective and deregulated energy market. But all my husband's colleagues at the national utility here panic when they read the news from California. Then again, they panic at the prospect of German coal, too. However, it's interesting that the California market has shown the rest of the world what not to do.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

Sarah: Energy is an infinite resource, for all practical purposes. As long as the sun continues to shine in the sky we will have energy. Large scale concentrating solar power is practical, and, given current market prices, even economically viable. America could almost eliminate its burning of fossil fuels tomorrow with the passing of a few simple laws. Why don't they? Economics. America is the leading polluter in the world for one simple reason: it's cheaper. (Well, normally.)

The best way to encourage people to conserve electricity is to raise the cost, by the way. Double windows weren't commonly used in housing construction until energy prices were high enough to make it worth doing, for example.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

What are we doing to reduce consumption. Turning our monitors off instead of letting the screen saver come on. Turning off all unnecessary lights in the house. Leaving the space heater off during the day, but on at night.

And I suppose forgetting to do the laundry always helps:)

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

I will confess to not knowing much about this, but if deregulation has worked in other places but not California, couldn't the reason be the constant and insane pace of growth in California? That's the source of most of our other problems -- pollution, a crumbling infrastructure (that one comes from growth plus the effects of the tax revolt in the seventies), water shortages, and housing costs that are completely out of control. We have too many people making demands on our resources, and we are always woefully unprepared for every growth spurt.

The current crisis scares me, because it gives me an inkling of how we will react to a real shortage if it happens: badly, and along partisan lines. Some of the scary answers to the current situation are things like reviving plans for dams that were a bad idea to begin with, reopening Rancho Seco and building new nuclear plants, and gutting clean air laws. On the other hand, I'm not hearing liberals calling for conservation and new energy sources; I'm hearing them blame big business and bad planning ... which is all well and good; there's plenty of blame to go around, but we do waste a tremendous amount of energy in this state, and I'd really like to hear people talk about long-term reductions.

For instance: why in the hell aren't street and parking lot lights in suburban strip malls equipped with solar cells? Lizzie is right about those lights blazing day and night inside the malls, too. Do all California electric companies do what SMUD does, giving away shade trees, giving rebates for replacing old appliances with energy- efficient ones, and offering incentives for customers to reduce energy consumption? Why aren't new homes well-insulated? (I'm taking Lizzie's word for that; I've always lived in 50+ year old houses.)

I don't know, I just see a lot of blame-shifting in the media and coming out of the Capitol, and I don't see that as being particularly helpful. We're all turning off unnecessary lights right now and wearing extra sweaters, but are businesses doing the same? Are they going to keep doing the same after this is over? I doubt it.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

Dave,

That was more or less the point that I was trying to make, although looking back I didn't state it very clearly. Fossil fuels, which are currently the major source of California's energy, aren't infinite. With prices as low as they've been in the past, it was almost impossible for solar and other renewables to compete, in part because of externalities that weren't taken into account. I'm hoping that the deregulation crisis, by raising energy costs, will actually encourage the development of renewable energy sources and energy efficient applicances.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

The question about California's outrageous growth, and its effect on energy prices is a good one. From what I know about how deregulation has worked in other countries and states, I'd say that growth has exacerbated whatever problems existed with the way the system is set up. The circumstances that make California's grid a mess (a state agency required to announce shortages, and utilites forced to buy power at any price) would have broken down regardless, but the shrieking pace of demand probably made the problem much, much worse. One of the biggest draws on the grid in PG&E's service territory has been server farms. Companies put a bunch of computers in the middle of nowhere, not realizing that they are setting up a single warehouse that draws as much power as the entire CITY OF BERKELEY, and that is completely insane. It goes without saying that these server farms are nowhere near high voltage transmission lines, which could ship them that kind of power (if it were available).

I am still a little nonplussed that people's reaction to shortages has not been to conserve (sure, some people turn off their computers, but you're not seeing a big push toward conservation). I suspect that that will be the case until people start seeing real price signals, namely, large power bills. I think it's pathetic that only money out of pocket will make people save power, but if that's so, so be it. As far as solar cells in street lights go, it's sort of a myth that solar is really that effective. Keeping solar cells efficient is quite chemically intensive, and the cost of generating power that way is very high. Power that costs 20-25 cents per kilowatt hour to generate may make sense in the current environment, but there are cheaper ways to generate that are less polluting, if you count the downstream effect of solar chemicals. The new natural gas turbines are very, very clean, and even with high prices for natural gas, they are probably half as expensive to run. I had a natural-gas fired clothes dryer and stove in my house, and they put off more pollution per BTU than a well-designed plant.

Utility companies used to encourage customers to save power with things like shade trees and front-loading clothes washers, but these incentives were one of the first things to disappear with deregulation. PG&E and SCE are now supposed to be in the power distribution business ONLY -- pipes and wires, and that's it. The separation never happened completely, but the plan was that generators and the state would take over power-saving inducements for consumers. However, it turns out that residential consumer energy efficiency doesn't have that much impact, except at certain times of day. The load shape of residential consumers (surges in the morning and evening) strains the grid, but there's no evidence that changing out your washer or fridge has much impact on those peak usage times.

One of the best ways to save power, which has been used extensively over the last year, is to demand that large industrial customers on a special rate curtail their use when the grid is facing shortages. This is extremely effective, but unfortunately the energy shortage has been so severe that these customers were being asked to shut down once or twice a week, and they lost all the savings they might have gained from the decreased rates. As a result, none of them are willing to stay on a rate schedule where they're forced to curtail anymore. So now one more escape hatch has been shut. For a time the utility offered industrial customers the chance to put in a bid when energy was limited -- how little would they be willing to take to shut down between 2-6 pm? Unfortunately, a broke utility can no longer offer those inducements.

Anyway, it's a bad situation. I tend to believe that nothing will happen until people face the real costs of power. That means customers start paying 30 cents a kilowatt hour. In that scenario, I see three things happening: (1) people will become very, very serious about conservation; (2) companies from all over the world will rush to build plants in California; and (3) localities will stop blocking every single power plant proposal (San Jose would be a good example). It would take a long time for the dust to settle, but eventually you'd get more power at lower prices.

In the meantime, I'm all about cheap, reliable nuclear power. Too bad the French have such scary reactors, and oh yeah, that whole 10,000 years of radioactive waste thing.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

I think all Calif utilities offer rebates for efficient appliances, but as someone pointed out to me, when most people buy a new fridge they don't get rid of it, they put it in the garage to hold beer. So it's still there using a lot of power.

I've been told that California houses in general, even old ones, tend to be built with less insulation than houses in the East. I've only lived in new ones so I don't know. That's cool if your old houses have had good insulation, beth.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

Oh, see, I thought you only got the rebate if you turned in the old appliance ... you used to be able to get a rebate just for turning in an old fridge, whether you bought a new one or not, so I wouldn't think the beer fridge phenomenon would be a problem. (People who do that must not check their utility bills. A new fridge can make a HUGE difference, and a small-size efficient fridge is just not that expensive. Buy a new fridge for your beer!)

As for old houses, they aren't especially well-insulated; I just have no experience with new ones.

Our house now is all lathe and plaster -- no room to put in more insulation, but the plaster keeps things fairly warm. We have insulation in the attic, as well. Our real problem is our back room, which doesn't even have proper walls, just boards through which you can see daylight. Our basement is also uninsulated and has no proper floor. Thus, our house is really, really cold and not energy efficinet. (But it's completely shaded in the summer, so we hardly use our a/c even in Sacramento.) When we rebuild the back room we'll have proper insulation installed, and once we've done the work we need to do on the plumbing and electricity, we'll finish the basement and insulate it, as well.

That should be done sometime in 2024, unless energy prices continue to rise, thus making it more economical for us to hurry up and get the work done. Go, energy prices! I want my basement gym!

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

Dorie: I think Beth meant they should put light sensors on the street lights so they go out during the day.

On the subject of solar cells... there currently exists much better solar power systems than solar cells. Have a look here:
http://www.eren.doe.g ov/csp/csp_tech.html

Current costs estimates run from 5 to 15 cents per kilowatt-hour.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

"I suspect that that will be the case until people start seeing real price signals, namely, large power bills."

BINGO! That's why price control never, ever, work. If the controller prices the good above market no one will buy it, and if they price it below market the existing supply will be bought up, and no new supplies will be forthcoming.

Of course politicans threatening to arrest the suppliers will also dry up supply and force up prices. See for example Stalin's farm policy.

The way to get the lowest price on anything is to free up the market for that product.

Jim

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

Jim, I'm not sure how you read that statement of Dorie's as advocating cheaper power -- she was wondering why no one seems to care about conservation until prices go up. Can I then read your statement as suggesting that a free energy market would result in cheaper power, resulting in more waste and less conservation? How exactly is that an argument for a free market?

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

Jim: price control can, and has, worked. For starters it helps if the price is set at a proper level. What has hurt California hasn't been prices controls per se, but rather the price being locked at an improper level.

Further, supply can be regulated. In fact, the natural gas shortage we are seeing today is largely due to gas deregulation that occured in Canada in the mid-to-late eighties. It's funny, really. When gas was deregulated gas prices fell and the politicians all patted themselves on the back. BUT the whole reason for the prices falling was that there was a huge oversupply, as was formerly required by the regulations. So the gas companies reduced explorations. Why spend money on supply they didn't need? Now, some 10 years later, it has finally caught up with us and we are worse off than we were when the supply and prices were regulated.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

Dave, every time price controls fails, and they fail every time they are tried, it's always said that the controller didn't do it right.

Since you are from Canada, are you familar with the extensive wage- and-price controls imposed in the U.S. by that left-wing wacko Richard Nixon? He thought that 4% inflation was too high, and so he tried to command the economy in such a way that prices would fall. They were a huge disaster, he created the double-digit inflation that ate the presidencies of Presidents Ford and Carter.

This article will help folks understand. Geeze, I wish I could write a tenth as well.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

"Can I then read your statement as suggesting that a free energy market would result in cheaper power, resulting in more waste and less conservation? How exactly is that an argument for a free market?"

The free market will set the correct price for power, as it does for everything else. That price is the price that willing sellers and buyers agree on. People don't like to throw money away, and if the supply of energy is really decreasing then market will encourage just the right amount of conservation.

"But what about pollution, Jim?" This is where I part company from some of my Libertarian friends. If you impose costs on others by damaging the air or water, then I think the government has the right to ask to stop doing it or to pay those costs. But the government shouldn't just jump in and try and set some price target, high or low.

The price over the long run (where "long run" is defined as 1 year or more) will be significantly lower in a free market than in a price controlled market, even if the controller is trying to control for low prices. Of course it's easy to use control to make prices high, but hard to control them in such a way that real scarcity is avoided.

Price controls will almost always go beyond just causing high prices, they will cause real scarcity, as Dr. Sowell points out.

If you want to discourage use of electricity, just tax it. Anytime you tax something (jobs, income, investment, health care, etc) people will make or do less of it.

Price control are much worse than just taxes. If you try to directly control prices what will happen after a few years is that the supply will just go away. I think a lot of silly people want this to happen.

Be careful though. I'd suggest that if you think turning off the power will improve the environment, you ought to travel to countries where they don't have much power. Power translates directly into wealth (in the Adam Smith sense of the word). The quality of the environment improves almost linearly with the per capita wealth of the country. If you want a cleaner environment, you need to careful not to reduce the wealth of the country.

Jim

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

At the risk of wearing out my welcome on a subject about which I feel very strongly, I did a google search on "Nixon price controls" and got this excellent article as the first hit.

Just substitute "power" for "pharmaceuticals".

Jim

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

No way. You cannot compare pharmaceuticals and power in this context. Pharmaceutical companies make more money through R & D. Gas producers make less money by increasing the supply. The tighter the supply, the more money they make. See: OPEC.

Your lofty principles don't quite apply.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

Jim, price controls work sometimes. Airlines. Better in the '70s. Suck today. Say me nay.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2001

"Jim, price controls work sometimes. Airlines. Better in the '70s. Suck today. Say me nay."

Nay. I was flying airlines in the 70s. It was VERY expensive, and there were many fewer flights. The reason people have fond memories of the 70s is because the planes flew half full. Most of the people who flew airlines back then were on expense accounts of one kind or another. Grayhound and Continetal trailways had huge route structures that have long since gone away.

Now that there is true competition fares are rock bottom, and flights are frequent. Can you say "Southwest Airlines"? Old geezers like me sometimes miss price regulated airlines because the high prices kept the hoi-poli on the bus.

Jim

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

And there's a "free market" for power where?

The problem with turning to this grail-like "free market" for everything is that a truly free market rarely exists.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

"And there's a "free market" for power where?"

There seems to global agreement that the power industry needs more competition, countries all over the world are working to deregulate their power system and introduce more competition. They even gave this idea lip service in the People's Republic of California. It just turns out that California did everything wrong.

I think President Bush is correct to go slow on bailing the Californians out. Those of us in the 49 states that don't have "greedy" (i.e. price and supply fixed) utilities need to show some tough love to our brothers and sisters in California.

We in the rest of the country need to hold an intervention with California.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

Jim, I would say that was price controls working.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

Fine, we'll do it with the lights on, at least.

In the mean time, please explain- where's the free market? The "spot market" where excess power (subsized or capped to various extents by local authorities) is sold by power producers? I could be wrong in my information. This is an honest question.

~

Without diverting the discussion, I think power (like frequency spectrum) should be an almost entirely federal issue.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

"Without diverting the discussion, I think power (like frequency spectrum) should be an almost entirely federal issue."

I don't agree. We have our own power grid here in Texas and we're just fine, thank you. I don't see the federal interest.

Now if I set up a million watt AM station in my back yard, that would be different.

Jim

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

Oh, that's right. Power companies in Texas only sell power to Texas buyers, and power buyers in other states stick to their own states.

Nevermind.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

We went out and dropped about $75 on those energy efficient bulbs that only use 15-25 watts instead of 60-100 for starts. We got rid of the fish tank because no one cleaned it anyhow and the last time anyone bought fish for it was a couple years ago.

We turn off lights all over the house, bought an anti-stench candle for the bathroom, in lieu of using a fan and I've been washing a lot more dishes by hand rather than using my dishwasher, although, that about kills me.

We've turned down the heat and worn slippers and brought out blankets. ____

As for whodunnit...

I don't give a crap who did it...I just want it fixed. If I have to pay more, then phase it in over a few months, so I can learn to afford it and so that people on fixed incomes get help to cover it. I don't believe we pay what we should on our energy, so I'm not against paying more. I just want to know that it's not just going to line someone else's pockets...that it goes to actual cost of the stuff, that it doesn't become dividends for some lucky stockholder. I also am not fond of the fact that residential customers are the proposed payees of the bulk of these price hikes.

PG&E sent out a proposed rate hike that saw residential customers paying 40% more while other customers only saw a 10-20% increase. I don't mind shouldering some of the burden, but I'd rather not shoulder it alone.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2001

As Jeremy et. al. have noted above, the price controls in California were set into place to COAX PG&E and Edison to support the deregulation legistlation that was seen as a way to reduce our very high power rates in California in the early half of the nineties. The legislature was desperate to do anything to stem the flow of businesses fleeing the state because of the persistant recession and high cost of doing business due to energy prices.

The consumer prices were fixed at the current rate to allow the utilities to recoup the costs of further investment in power plants and to sweeten the deal.

To quote Pete King in the LA Times: "the retail price freezes that the utilities now claim are driving them toward the poorhouse were designed not as a ceiling, but as a floor. Only in the wind-fog of crisis politics has the canard taken hold that Californians are hooked on something-for-nothing power. We scurried into the deregulation era paying some of the steepest prices for power in the land. We will stagger out of it the same way."

BTW, I heard on the radio this morning that conservation efforts have reduced usage by 1000 megawatts, enough to power 1 million homes and stave off rolling blackouts.

Who is ultimately going to pay the bills for this fiasco which has been brought about by shortsighted legislators, greedy power companies and rampant NIMBYism? The consumers.

I agree that price controls cause problems, but I think the way to deal with the economic problems brought about by controls is for the public to own its own power plants. The problems of public ownership of energy pale in comparison to the problems of letting the free market run roughshod over the consumer.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2001

That's why price control never, ever, work.

Jim: Having thought about this some I think you are forgetting that there is only one electric utility that is set up to supply your house with power. You are a captive consumer. Without price control they can pretty much charge you what they want. How can you possibly insist there should be no price control in this situation?

Every utility in the country is covered by price controls (as far as I know), yet only California has this problem. How can your argue price controls are the problem? It's California's implementation that is the problem, not the concept itself.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2001

I just attended a presentation by someone who works on this issue on the state level, someone who (for the purposes of his work and the presentation) is officially bipartisan and presents facts and objective analysis. Thus introduced:

Causes: a) no new generating facilities have been built in California for ten years and more. b) CA has relied over several years on other states' generating power--AZ, NV, OR, and WA in its region--all of which have experienced population and thus demand booms. NV's population has increased by 50% in the past decade while its generation has not, and thus it has had less power to sell to CA. c) a large percentage I forget of the Internet is served in CA, with the whole country('s economy) relying on those mongo servers. d) rates were set (price controls, Jim) in the early '90s when the economy was in recession, when there was a lot of excess power, when a lot of people fled CA (I listened to this presentation in Denver; Colorado saw a huge influx from CA in the early '90s). e) NOx regulations in CA provide that there can be a certain amount of pollution in a region. Polluter A can sell its allowances to Polluter B so that the amount of pollution is within a set limit but one polluter is emitting two polluters' share. As demand for power increased, older generating stations were returned to service, stations that are less efficient and emit more pollution, such that companies were struggling to meet environmental controls. f) electricity cannot be stored.

*One* reason for deregulation was that in the early '90s, residential electricity customers paid about $0.11 per kilowatt hour (kWh) while wholesale prices ranged from less than one cent to about 2 cents kWh. An intent of deregulation (the presenter preferred to call it "restructuring") was to make that lower price available to John Q. Public. However, upon dereg'ing, only about 1.7% of customers in CA switched providers (now that they had a choice). There was little competition. Green power was still so much more per kWh than fossil that your average customer could not afford to buy green power--not enough supply of it for growing demand.

The presenter didn't speak much about price controls as a cause, or diverting profits from the utilities to the investors (as happened last summer) such that the utilities couldn't do their job anymore, because of time constraints. And I must say I didn't learn any more causes. I probably went in intending to emerge believing that there're just too damn many humans wanting too much luxury, and whaddya know, that's what I came out thinking.

Oh, and about the TX thing Curtis asked about. TX seems to be an entity unto itself, powerwise. There are three regions of the country that can share power around: the west, the east, and TX. Which is why CO is going to be screwed if we can't generate an additional 6K megawatts w/in the next five years, and why if New England has a hot summer, it's going to experience what CA's going through now.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2001

I'm turning into a big old crab - now I notice when people have every light in their house on and bitch to my spouse about it. Also, around here some peoples till have Christmas lights up and turn them on - I mean the little white ones. I guess they think they aren't Christmas lights. I think they look tacky.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

I sort of like the little white lights, but not this year. I was horrified by how many more lights there were this year than in previous years. The whole city was lit up all through December. I guess people don't watch the news.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001