Thanks Jim for chiming in on the CA. power issue. I was hoping we might hear from you on this. I have heard many folks blaming the providers and the "Infinite Energy article hints at this issue.
However I should quote from the article which differs from your input a bit.
Just out-takes
"No major power plants were constructed in the last ten years in California".
"In the early 90's the (CA)power companies said there was 30% EXCESS generating capacity."
"In the late 90's the demand grew much more rapidly than expected and capacity fell behind".
"The financial crisis came to a head in Jan 2001 when PG&E defaulted on 726 million in short term debt."
The article publishes a table of total power production by resource put out by the California energy commission for the 90s which showed a steady smooth increase over the 90's of 9% in power usage in CA. The Edison Electric institute disagreed with this figure and claims 4% increase alone in 1996 and another 3.4% in 1997 and a sudden 10% increase in 2000.
According to the table california no longer produces a single kilowatt with oil (phased out)
The article also hints that a lot of the shortages are related to just plain bad luck with nature conspiring to increase demand and for a few months forced CA to import electricity. (impacting prices)
"a third of CA. electricity comes solely from natural gas"
The Article states that if California continues to upgrade and build huge wind facilities that it might constitute up to 13% of the demand, but that is an if. Most of their first genration stuff is old now and must be replaced.
California is building several incredibly massive conventional plants currently which might solve the problem (very expensive natural gas again) but they are not to be completed until 2003, provided they remain on schedule and natural gas remains a viable energy source on a price/performance basis.
The article states that the combined new wind and gas systems, when in place, will totally solve the problems there, but the big "if" is those, perhaps, incredibly expensive gas fired conventional facilities which will dwarf the wind effort by comparison.
Some estimates put the current loss to the CA citizens on this power problem at 40 Billion dollars!
Like I said CA. has some incredible possibilities and liabilities on power the power issue.
Finally, I would never have advocated the loss or complete scrapping of conventional power for fission nuclear. WE ARE GOING TO NEED IT ALL! I think we need immediate augmentation of conventional with nuclear to cover immediate growth and predicted short falls. If in excess of immediate needs, then shut down only the most expensive and less long term viable conventional systems while continuing to grow nuclear capacity.
Remember, all these systems can be shut down in a heart beat, and gleefully, if some devine gift of the Gods falls in to the hands of some lucky researcher. The ideas is to pray for the gift, but prepare for what appears to be the inevitable buckling of the old time fossil power provider.
Richard Hull
Created on Thursday, March 29, 2001 7:16 PM EDT by Richard Hull