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Article #123Re: Outsider viewpoint of CA power crisis
From: Jeffrey Siegal
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 05:39
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 05:39
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2324 bytes
John Higdon wrote: > What we should have been doing all along is to refuse to pay the exorbitant > prices...period. If that would mean dropping load (rolling blackouts), then > that is what it would mean. Once the generators learn that they are not > going to get astronomical prices for on-peak electricity, you can bet the > price will drop like a stone. What price would you suggest? While I might agree that it would be better to simply allow blackouts than to pay extreme peaks of $1900/mWh, these don't happen that often. The cost most of the time is in the range of $200/mWh, and that approximates natural gas costs. By contrast, the cost built into the rate structure is only about $60/mWh. If you were to refuse to pay more than $60/mWh, you would lose nearly all of the natural gas fired capacity, because they simply could not afford to pay for fuel (and pollution credits) at that price. About 35% of the capacity goes offline. Since nearly 50% of the customers are exempt from rolling blackouts for political or technical reasons, the rest of us would be subject to "rolling" blackouts 60+% of the time!
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X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 107d03,af5e5edc3039a6a2 X-Google-Attributes: gid107d03,public X-Google-Thread: 10b619,af5e5edc3039a6a2 X-Google-Attributes: gid10b619,public X-Google-Thread: f824f,af5e5edc3039a6a2 X-Google-Attributes: gidf824f,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-05-17 22:39:58 PST Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!archiver1.sj.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Jeffrey Siegal <jbs@quiotix.com> Newsgroups: sdnet.general,ba.general,la.general Subject: Re: Outsider viewpoint of CA power crisis Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 22:39:57 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <3B04B5AD.254D060A@quiotix.com> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <9e1rc7$gdj$1@slb1.atl.mindspring.net> <9e1ues$bhp$1@agate.berkeley.edu> <3b048770$0$193$e2e8da3@nntp.cts.com> <C_%M6.206$1R4.7766@typhoon.sonic.net> <B729FCC4.3D626%no-spam@RadioMonopoly.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 21