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California: Beginning Anew

The 2002 rhetoric sounds like pro-electric competition, but is it too little, too late?

In its recent efforts to tie up the loose ends left from the California Crisis, is the state setting itself up for a sequel, California Crisis II: A Not So Beautiful Market?
Byline: 

Richard Stavros

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FERC's California Caps: Just Smoke and Mirrors?

Industry experts debate whether so-called “price mitigation measures” miraculously solved the California crisis.

Wholesale electricity prices are lower in California than they were last May, before FERC implemented price caps. But there is widespread disagreement over whether the caps were the cause of the lower prices, or merely coincidental with other downward pressures.
Byline: 

Jennifer Alvey

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Pat Packs a Punch

FERC's new chairman runs roughshod over a reeling industry.

By a vote of 3-1, FERC had crowned the Midwest Independent System Operator—MISO—as belle of the ball. In so doing, it scorned the proposed Alliance Regional Transmission Organization.
Byline: 

Bruce W. Radford

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Making Markets Work: How ISO Rules Still Cause Problems

How obscured spot prices, unhedgeable basis differentials, unreliable and financially insecure clearing practices inhibit market liquidity.

To date there has been little clarity as to how the physical and financial markets would work together to eliminate the need for continued price regulation, as FERC has proposed.
Byline: 

Becky Kilbourne and Robert Maxant

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Energy Trading & Marketing: The Evolution of the Deal

Energy traders and risk managers reengineered their business dealings to manage against unexpected political and financial risks posed by California and Enron in 2001.

The rules of energy market survival changed forever in 2001. California and Enron were both humbled by gyrating prices and blackouts in the Golden State, and financial misadventure dethroned the once-crowned king of energy trading. These twin events sent shockwaves through the very foundation of the energy trading and risk management establishment.
Byline: 

Richard Stavros

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The Rules of the Grid: Transmission Policy and Motives Gehind It

Making sense of RTO Week, the mediation talks, and FERC's promised new rulemaking.


 

Making sense of RTO Week, the mediation talks, and FERC's promised new rulemaking.

Dynegy's senior vice president Peter Esposito didn't think much about the celebrated mediation talks on forming a single, unified transmission grid for the Northeast U.S.

Byline: 
Bruce W. Radford
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Off Peak

Off Peak

November 15, 2001

Markets Behaving Badly

 

To understand 'gaming,' be a gamer.

FERC Staff Member: What sort of behavior is wrong?

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Off Peak

Make that 2.3 cents-the miserly refund that California says it might owe for power that it sold to the Pacific Northwest.<b> </b>

Off Peak

October 1, 2001

Pennies From Heaven

 

Make that 2.3 cents-the miserly refund that California says it might owe for power that it sold to the Pacific Northwest.

Every time it rains ... it still leaves those hydro reservoirs just a little bit short.

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