PMFJI,  (with apologies to Wirt for originally sending this to him, instead of the list)

I have a couple of questions about the "deregulation" that California undertook.

IIRC, part of the agreement for price deregulation was to cap prices for a period of 5 years and to prevent the electric distributors from entering into any long term purchase contracts for electricity.  I've been able to verify the price caps, but I haven't been able to verify the long term contract prohibition.  Can anyone shed some light on this?

>>> Wirt Atmar <[log in to unmask]> 01/17/01 05:03PM >>>
Mark writes:

>> Well, it's finally come to pass -- rotating blackouts have been ordered for
>>  Northern California:
>>
>>          http://www.caiso.com/newsroom/releases/ 
>>
>>  MSNBC reports outages in the Bay Area.

<snip>

> The event that precipitated today's rolling blackouts occured a week ago,
> when SCE retained its last $600 million dollars by stopping payment on all of
> its debts. That move not only prompted the downgrade in its and PG&E's
> ratings, it also dramatically worsened the problem in California this week.
> Out-of-state power producers have now stopped selling their excess
> electricity to the California utilities, simply because they don't believe
> that they're going to get paid, thereby forcing today's rolling blackouts.

Hasn't some talk been floated about forcing the electicity producers to write off a portion of these potential bad debts?

> Further, the Western and Rocky Mountain state governments are getting more
> than a little grouchy about being forced to sell their electric power
> production to California by the US Dept. of Energy. Many of these state
> governments see California's predictament as putting them at risk, too.

First California get most of the water; now it gets a bunch of electricity.

<snip>