I tells ya, this ‘not in my backyard’ attitude in California is getting really old. It’s gonna change when our power bills double, though.
A 9% rate hike has just been approved. However, Edison and PG&E say bankruptcy is just weeks away. They say there will be rolling blackouts throughout Southern California, because the State will not intervene to fix the wholsale price.
Damn deregulation.
BTW - I just got back from Page, AZ, which features two interesting power plants - the Salt River Project Navaho Generating Station coal plant (3 810-MW Gross, 750-MW Net units), and the Glen Canyon dam (maximum potential output 1290 MW Net).
Seems that Navaho is making quite a bit of money wheeling energy over to Califronia, but Glen Canyon, in the worst part of this Summer, was not allowed to. According to one of their tour operators (hey, I had a little extra time, so sue me) the dam was unable to supply nearly 800 MW of dirt-cheap energy to help out California, for one simple elegant reason.
Environmentalists threatened to bring a “multitude of lawsuits” (according to the tour operator) if the dam operated during the Summer at full capacity because of fears that the high water flow would negatively affect wildlife downstream on the Colorado River. Ironically, the guide added, there are several other environmental groups calling for the dismantalling of the Glen Canyon dam, claiming that the low water flow has already destroyed the downstream wildlife. Strangely, their gift shop actually sells a book which details environmental efforts to block the construction and change the operation of the dam, even including essays calling for the total removal of the 575 foot-high structure.
So, another interesting thing to think of. Mind you, my only information thus far on these details was from a dam tour operator, and an engineer at SRP who works with power sales who verifed the basic facts.
Makes you wonder how much lower rates in CA would have been with 800 MW of incredibly cheap, relatively environmentally friendly hydro power…
Well, here’s the perspective from a sorta environmental person.
One, the people complaining about high water flow are IDIOTS. All the problems I have EVER heard about from dams are due to LOW water flow, which allows for higher concentrations of contaminants, decreased oxygen supply, etc. I don’t doubt for a second that that’s why they’re fighting the dam, Anth…I just think they’re morons for doing it. (After rereading the post…if the dam operated at capacity, would that remove the low water problem? Just a thought…)
Two, California should relax the current pollution standards on plants. It’s my understanding that there are enough plants IN Cali to take care of the power problem, but half are shut down because they met their pollution allowance for the year. Having said that, I don’t think it’ll happen…California is PROUD of having the most stringent standards for pollution in the country.
Three, California’s problems could soon become everyone’s. EPA has been trying for YEARS to get all pollution levels set to the “California levels,” which are MUCH lower than current national levels. Do I think it’s needed? Not really…the original standards were researched to be effective. Why go lower, when it could adversely affect industry THIS much?
Four, a general comment. This is what PISSES me off about some environmentalists - a refusal to be practical about things, as well as saving the environment. Instead of helping people learn how to conserve power in CA, they’ll file lawsuits that will make it worse. No wonder people hate environmentalists so much.
Advocacy groups can threaten lawsuits, but they do not have the ultimate decision–there are people holding office who make that decision. So. . .
If a major part of the problems in CA are the result of elected officials and/or non-elected appointees of elected officials (as it would seem to a non-resident), does CA think that, also? How is it being reported there?
If only our consumption were steady-state, I would place greater store by conservation. However, it obviously isn’t.
Be that as it may, the trouble is only partly that our discretionary consumption has increased. The rest of it is population increase. How do we motivate consumers to conserve when all the good results of conservation are undone by population growth? If we don’t come to grips with this situation we are definitely–not perhaps–headed for
squalor and disaster. It is a default future, the future which will happen if we do nothing.
Be that as it may, wrt the short term I wonder why things are so much worse now than last year. Do we have that many more computers and refrigerators than we did on 1/1/00? That many more people? I don’t think so. This lends credence to the notion that this whole crisis is
fabricated. I think there must be something to that, but only regarding the short term situation. But the longer term issues of how we will generate power over the next centuries must be addressed.
I mentioned in a thread about transportation that homeowners never want rapid transit systems in their neighborhoods. The same goes for power stations. I’ve heard this called the BANANA principle, which means build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone. In short, no one is willing to face the fact that we have too many people here to live the way we used to, and some of us are going to have to live near power stations. The Greens, though I basically approve of their goals, will not face the issue of population growth. And, Anthracite, our California mess isn’t entirely our fault, since we have absolutely no control over immigration at state level. The federal government alone determines immigration policy, and the immigrants themselves decide what state they want to live in. Immigration is the elephant in the living room that everyone is ignoring.
(Let me say here that I realize that immigration is a complex issue that goes far beyond just trying to keep people out or letting them in, but that’s a subject for another thread).
I’ve read that LA county is serviced by a publicly held utility and that there are about 30 other PHU’s in Cal. There doesn’t seem to be any supply crunch in LA, at least no reports that I have seen. This raises a couple of questions.
[ul]
[li]What does LA’s PHU pay for electricity?[/li]
[li]Do LA consumers receive subsidies to keep their rates artificially low?[/li]
[li]Where does LA’s PHU get their power?[/li]
[li]How does LA county avoid the issues raised in earlier posts: hard-headed greens, hungry immigrants, short-sighted elected officials?[/li][/ul]
All questions apply as well to the 30 other PHU’s.
Thank you Falcon, for an excellent point. I agree that we should look after our environment and be very careful about what we put into the air, but there is a practical side.
The entire economy of Silicon Valley depends on steady energy supply, and unless people are ready to go back to subsistence (?) farming, we better keep it running. Most of S.F.'s business relies on it too. Those big financial institutions don’t run on beans, it’s electricity.
The problems California has now started quite a while back, with Jerry Brown - he really set the precedent for this type of denial of the obvious (i.e. - don’t build roads or power plants, then we won’t have as much pollution).
Right now we have plants that don’t run because they are out of pollutions credits, and we are facing blackouts. How ridiculous can it get? The power can be generated but isn’t due to CARB (California Air Resources Board) regulations, and they won’t relax them even in a crisis. It is completely ridiculous to say that we can import electricity from elsewhere, but we can’t generate it here. What? It’s OK to pollute somewhere else? How hypocritical can you get?
I don’t really know the details of LA Department of Water and Power (by the way, it is only the City of Los Angeles, not the country). But the difference between a Muni and a regulated utility is that California Public Utility Commission has basically no jurisdiction over the munis. So, while SCE was forced to A) sell off generation; and b) buy all of it’s power out of the Power Excahnge on a daily basis, the municipals like LADWP were able to buy/build new generation and enter into long term contracts. These two things allowed LADWP to mitigate any price spikes on wholesale electricity and actually gave them a surplus generation that they could then sell to the rest of the state. They have made a lot of money this way. Municipal utilities do frequently operate at a loss, and therefore provide subsidized power to their customers. However, currently the LADWP is making money hand over fist.
FYI, the other biggest municipal utilities in California are: Sacramento Municpal Utility District (SMUD), Anaheim, Riverside, Pasadena, Burbank, and Glendale.
From the front page of the Los Angeles Daily News 01/09/01
That’s why I voted for him. God bless Gov. Davis!
I’m reviving this discussion because some new information has come to light about the California electrical crisis.
The private utilities PG&E and SCE say they are broke and cannot pay the wholesale price of electricity. But one of the rules for de-regulation was that they had to sell off their power plants. They did so. Guess what they did with the money:
SCE spent $10 billion on electrical plants in other states and in other countries. PG&E did the same, spending $9 billion. They behaved not unlike those lottery winners who spend all their winnings in a short time and are broke again, desperately awaiting the next check. It’s THEIR fault they cannot pay the wholesale price for electricty and yet they want the government to bail them out, a classic case of corporate welfare.
The LAWeekly has a LONG series of articles in the last issue devoted to the crisis. Read 'em and weep (or laugh, if you prefer). (Links for these other stories are in the purple bar on the right.)
In fact, you may laugh (sadly) at the story written by a SCE insider who details that company’s corporate culture. It reads like a set of Dilbert strips. In a meeting for potential executives, attendees were required to make plaster masks of their faces and study them to learn the subtleties of non-verbal communications. There’s even a Mission Statement that reads as if it were written by the Pointy-Haired Boss.
To sum it up, the insider says SCE was completely unprepared and simply refused to believe that anything could go wrong, not unlike the owners and captain of the Titanic.
And we Californians will pay for their folly.
That this is a complex issue is a point no one has disagreed with. Just trying to get an object measure for the ‘costs’ involved in power productionn (or most other heavy industries) is almost impossible as the long term impact of these industries are almost impossible to objectify.
Do you include the health costs due to degradation of the air? Do you include the additional risks imposed by critical failures? Do you include the overall effect (if you can decide how to measure it) on global warming? Do you include the environmental impact? How do you measure environmental impact when it is almost always subjective?
Given this the Politicos have encamped, as is there wont into rather heavily fortified positions.
On one side there is the line ‘If consumers are forced to actually pay the full ‘cost’ we are going to be voted out of office, our job is to stay in office as long as is humanly possible, so lets hide, or ignore the costs and let someone else pay for them latter’.
Another side has the ‘You are never going to ever justify putting that in my back yard, so just forget about it, now someone else will have to give us what we need’.
Finally the minority middle ground ‘Lets try and control the costs as much as reasonable (without ever trying to define reasonable), but at least be honest about what they are (once we can agree amongst ourselves that is), in the mean time why don’t we try and find either something better (although we are not quite sure what) or at least try and cut back on the excessive usage we are making of these industries at present (That is you should, I NEED every bit of what I currently use).’
Unfortunately we don’t wont to pay more, we don’t want to cut back, and the viable alternatives are a long way off in the future.
This is why I hate complex problems that can only be dealt with on a large scale. Our present systems are just not designed to cope with them.
The masses seem to still believe what they are told, and only listen to what they want to hear. It will be the masses that vote the politicians in and out of office and the politicians that make the decisions.
So what can G W or anyone else interest do, fight ignorance, remember that we want our children to enjoy the same standard of living we have, accept some hard decisions need to be made, and hope ‘we’ (whichever side your on) are in the majority.
Living in hope
Britt
Wasn’t it California that passed Proposition X, which put a legislative cap on insurance rates?
After it passed, my immediate reaction was: I hope no one insures them. Because the insurance companies are going to make a profit or go bust. And if they can’t make a profit in California, they will either: a) not do business in California (and rightly so); or b) pass the costs on to policy holders in other states. And that’s ME.
So here we are, years later and I come to find out that once again, Californians have legislated themselves into yet another fine mess. They want power without the nuisance of pollution. They want insurance coverage for their mudslides, earthquakes, wildfires and sinkholes without the nuisance of rising premiums.
It’s pretty obvious: Californians want their cake and want to eat it, too. And as an Ohioan, let me say that I am sick and tired of paying (literally) for their ill-conceived laws.
Should W. bail out California? No. Let’s let Californians bail out Californians.
**No, they didn’t lose it, they SPENT it. Big difference.
Earlier, I linked to brand-new articles in the LAWeekly. Not included in the online versions is a set of charts 'n graphs that were published in the print versions. Here is some data from those graphs:
REVENUES IN BILLIONS OF DOLLARS (figures are approximate)
COMPANY…1999…2000
Calpine…$0.2…$1.0
Mirant…$0.5…$7.9
Reliant…$4.0…$9.8
Dynergy…$4.6…$10.0
Duke…$6.2…$15.4
Enron…$11.0…$40.1
(Source: companies’ own quarterly reports)
PROFITS IN MILLIONS OF DOLLARS (figures are approximate)
COMPANY…1999…2000
Sempra…$10…$130
Calpine…$99…$310
AES…$100…$401
Dynergy…$120…$410
Reliant…$440…$740
Enron…$890…$1,200
Duke…$1,500…$1,800
There’s also a graph comparing the wholesale price of power between the same dates in both 1999 and 2000. (It’s an average of Palo Verde, Cob and Mid-Columbia rates; the source is Power Markets Week.) In 1999, the wholesale price was very nearly a flat line from May 7 to August 20, never less than about $30 per megawatt-hour and never greater than $50. On August 25, the price peaked at $75 and then dropped off. (The graph ends there.)
2000 was different, to put it mildly. The graph looks like a seismometer tracing of an earthquake. On May 7, the price was about $90. On May 17, it was about $50. On May 27, it reached $200. On June 6, it was about $70. On June 16, it was $400. On June 26, $55; on July 6, the price skyrocketed to an astounding $600 per megawatt-hour. By July 16, it had dropped back to $75. On August 5, it was back up to $500 and then down to $125 on August 15. And on August 25, at the end of the graph, the price was $225.
Someone please explain to me how the price could have fluctuated so much so fast.
From LAWeekly, about Enron:
Can you say “Conflict of interest?” boys and girls? I knew you could. Do you think for one minute Bush would do ANYTHING to hurt such a generous contributor? Do you think Kenneth Lay would recommend ANY government action that would hurt his company’s bottom line?
Wow. If there’s one thing this thread taught me, it’s that Californians generate almost as much bigotry and hatred from other Americans as Southerners do. (I think it’s jealousy, and judging by the number of people who still want to move here I can’t be far wrong.) Let’s calm down the vitriol and look at some facts related to this crisis, shall we? We’ll touch on car insurance later, PunditLisa. (Like your post has anything to do with anything. WTH.)
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This was caused by a bad deregulation scheme.
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PG and E and SoCalEd are run by people who are both greedy and stupid.
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California’s increased energy demands are caused by huge numbers of people moving into the state, who need energy to power their homes as well as their offices. Short of chasing off these here newcomers back to Ohio or Kansas or wherever, which I think is unconstitutional, nothing can be done except wait for market forces (in the form of energy and real estate prices and bankrupt Internet firms) to re-establish an equilibrium.
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California’s energy supply has been hampered by, among other things, an inordinate number of plants taken off-line for maintenance. Coincidence? I think not, I think in this case the energy companies knew exactly what they were doing. (I am NOT paranoid; everyone IS out to get me.) And don’t get me started on all this “It’s those damn enviro hippies’ fault” crap. Our quality of life, which they are partly responsible for, is exactly why everyone wants to move here.
If you want Californians to take care of this, we sure can. We’ll start with hugely increased energy bills that hamper all these New Economy firms’s attempts to gain profitability. These firms will go belly-up a lot sooner, putting a big ol’ crimp in YOUR stock portfolio, and forcing you to work an extra two or three years before you can retire.
We’ll then follow up with big energy bills for all the unemployed newcomers who came here to work in these New Economy firms. These newcomers will then sell their 2-bed, 1-bath shacks 30 miles from their jobs, and take this money and buy four or five houses in YOUR neighborhood. They’ll then raze those houses and build a supermansion on the combined lot, with a three-car garage filled with SUV’s which spew hydrofluorocarbons into your kids’ lungs, and a huge wine cellar filled with some sweet-ass Napa chardonnay and Mendocino Pinot Noir, and sip their wine and sit in their hot tubs and watch you drinking your Burgie and dreaming of a better life, which they have tasted.
My point is that those of you wanting to see California go down the tubes, you had best be careful of what you wish for, you need us as much as we (even now) need you.
No, no, let’s start with the spike in gasoline prices last year…which negatively affected every Old Economy’s firm’s attempts to gain profitability last year. Because the cost of transporting goods is a significant factor if you deal with tangible merchandise.
P&G missed earnings a year ago in large part because transportation costs increased dramatically, as did the cost of materials. As a result, the stock traded down 50% in a matter of weeks. A lot of people who had planned on retiring had to delay.
Does that mean P&G should file for federal aid? No. It means P&G needs to work on creating better forecasts so they can prepare better for such an event. It means P&G needs to put pressure on its suppliers to keep costs down, or shop for another supplier. It means P&G has to pressure our legislators to come up with an alternative to OPEC.
P&G needs to deal with P&G’s unique problems. California needs to deal with California’s unique problems.
BTW, natural gas prices have quadrupled in the last 5 years here in Ohio. The average resident’s bill this winter was double what it was last year. So California doesn’t have a corner on the suffering.
Airblair, as a fellow Californian, I’d have to say you did a great job of talking about everything but the main problem - we don’t have the damn plants we need to generate enough power. (period)
You can talk all you want about the plants that are offline, but everyone in Sacto new that we were not building new plants to match the new demand for energy from people moving to the state and businesses requirering more and more energy for operations. Our government just sat on their hands, or even hampered any effort to keep up with demand by those who wanted to build more plants. So now we blame who? We blame the utility companies? No, I don’t believe they can take all of the blame.
Start with the lame plan they called de-regulation, then go back to twenty years of the ‘absolutely not in my back yard’ mentality, and you have your problem. Why the hell is it OK to buy power from other states but not generate it here? Why is it less serious to pollute our neighboring states than our own? I don’t buy that at all, I think it’s all a bunch of poilitical pandering by a bunch of wussies who sold out the future of the state for some short term political gain (‘Boy, I can really get the envoronmental vote if I go for this restriction!’)
Now, we’re paying twice for all our energy - once on the PG&E bill, and agian from our general tax fund (since the state is buying energy to keep us running). Next is the state takeover of power lines, and we’re one step closer to oldscratch’s wet dream - state owned everything. (Sorry scratch, just had to get you in here somehow).
So don’t go off on all these side issues, not until we address the main problem - want more energy? build more generating plants. Don’t want more generating plants? stop the growth of the population and industry.
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The price of land makes it too expensive to build a power plant in a city. Rural land is cheaper than urban land.
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Build a power plant in a city and you fuck up the air for a lot more people than you do if you build it out in the sticks.
Now it’s true that California still has some rural land, but we have a lot more people per square mile (on average) than any other state except New York. IOW, we’re running out of places to build plants. A lot of places (mountains, farm land, most of the desert, National Parks and Forests, State Parks, seashores) really aren’t suited for it. (You have to build it away from the cities so as to not contribute to pollution, but where do you get the labor?)
No, it was not. It contributed greatly to it, but was not the sole cause.
Half the people complaining about PG&E et al are claiming it is a “diabolocally intelligent scheme”. I wish we could all decide here which it is.
You think?
Wow…if I said something like that, ElvisL1ves would come over here and call me a partisan liar. I don’t see him here though…so I’ll just ask you to supply some proof myself. Accusing them of collusion is pretty serious. Especially when most of these companies are bitter rivals.
Well, your quality of life is now going to include $600 a month electric bills. Get used to Stage 3 alerts for a while. Until about Feb 2002.
(odd rant snipped…)
What in the HELL are you talking about?
Well, I will tell you this. If your Governor keeps talking “eminent domain” w.r.t. power plants, California will go dark until the USSC orders outside companies to supply electricity. How do you encourage investment in building plants in the State? By threatening to seize them? :rolleyes:
An aside - I attended a “secret” 1-hour presentation from EPRI a few weeks ago that was simply amazing. It laid out the entire process for what went wrong in CA, and what is happening now, and what can be done about it. This was a part of a report being put together to be presented to Congress, and if I can get permission, I will post a summary here, and see if people agree or disagree.
With respect, I disagree. The price of land is cheap compared to the cost of the plant. It is entirely politics that keeps new plants out of the inner city.
A new power plant which must meet all Federal and State emissions controls, especailly South Coast requirements, hardly “fucks up the air”, except for the greenhouse gases. Which affect Californians wherever they are produced.
Out of curiosity - why would you say this? Have you ever seen a power plant?
A modern gas turbine plant takes a lot less space than an apartment complex. Two Westinghouse 501D gas turbines (260 MW total - enough for a quarter million homes or so) occupy a site about the size of two large mobile homes, and with switchyard and outbuildings is smaller than the apartment building I lived in - let alone the whole complex. Can you back up your claim of size requirements? Because I can post pictures of how small a gas plant is.
And even if we are talking about coal or nuclear plants - they just are not that big! You seem to imply that the State is brimming from border to border with either people or Bald Eagles’ nests.
And where does the labor come from? Same place it comes from for any remotely built power plant in the whole US or the World. - it is shipped in. Look at Navaho Generating Station and Coronado Generating Station in Arizona (Page and St. Johns, respectively), or the Bonanza plant in Utah (Vernal), or Escalante in New Mexico (middle of nowhere) - these are large plants built in profoundly remote places - much moreso than most places in CA.