[SunRescue] OT: CA: It's Our Turn

[Chris Byrne]

Ken, you do have a point on the industrial consumption thing. Last year the
city of Santa Clara told exodus they couldnt build any more buildings there
because each Co-lo building used as much power as a small town. This is no
joke, no exageration.

The root cause of the energy "crisis" is this. Since 1984 Californias power
consumption has grown by 43% more than it's production. No new major
powerplants have been built here since 1988, and only 4 relativley small
pwer plants since 1982.

This is almost entirely due the two things. First, the environmental
legislation and environmentalist lobby, and second the lgislative
"dis-incentive" to build powerplants caused by completely screwed up power
price regulation. Essentially the Utilities can't build a new power plant
because it would cost them too much money and they can't raise their rates
to compensate, and the independant power producers make more money by
raising the rates rather than building new power plants because consumption
keeps going up.

This has been a problem building for 15 years, what brought it to a head was
the spike in oil and natural gas prices last year. That literally tripled
the production costs for electricity in this market, which of course was
pased on to the utilities, since the power producers rates are not
regulated. Unfortunately because of the HIGHLY regulated power distribution
rates here, the utilities were only allowed to raise prices by a fraction of
that increase.

This was good for home users, but it meant that the utilities were bleeding
money. Eventually they simply ran out of cash, and everyone knew it. That
meant that the power producers would not allow the utilities to buy on
credit becaue they were afraid of not getting paid. That made the power even
MORE expensive for the utilities to buy, and now they could only buy one
days worth at a time.

This is what caused the rolling blackouts.

Chris Byrne

-----Original Message-----
From: rescue-admin at sunhelp.org [mailto:rescue-admin at sunhelp.org]On
Behalf Of Ken Hansen
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 14:44
To: 'rescue at sunhelp.org'
Subject: RE: [SunRescue] OT: CA: It's Our Turn


Pete - how does this relate to the price of Hard Drives in NV? ;^)

Besides, as I understand it (from my *very distant* perspective, the issue
isn't that there isn't enough electricity "on the grid" to support
California, and it's not that other states are unwilling to sell (not
"share" - what a California term ;^), the real problem (again, as I
understand it) is that the utility companies are unwilling/unable to *pay*
for the electricity they need to supply their customers.

That demand spiked, that the price went up on the spot market, that the
utilities could not engage in long-term supply contracts, etc all
contributed to the confusion/problem you folks now face. Of course,
lop-sided legislation (again, as I understand it) accelerated the problem.
No one thing would have pushed California into it's current power "crisis",
it was a conspiracy of several factors that all came together that made this
such a dramatic problem for 'yall.

Oh, and by the way, I take issue with some of the number cited in the note
you shared... like 48th in power consumption per capita - I suspect this is
*residential* power usage... ISP colo facilities use tremendous amounts of
power, and are up 24x7, unlike an office tower, and those chip fabrication
plants, they must use a fair bit of electricity as well. I suspect that if
you divided total electricity usage for the state and divided it by the
number of residents, you would *at least* place much closer to the middle of
the range...

But, we wouldn't want to get off-topic! ;^)

Ken


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter L. Wargo [mailto:pwargo at basenji.com]
> Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 5:25 PM
> To: rescue at sunhelp.org
> Subject: [SunRescue] OT: CA: It's Our Turn
>
>
> Going around work... I couldn't resist, based on previous topics..
>
> -Pete
>
> > > America has engaged in some finger wagging lately
> > > because California doesn't have enough electricity to
> > > meet  its needs.

<snip>
_______________________________________________
rescue maillist  -  rescue at sunhelp.org
http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue