Talk:California electricity crisis

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[edit] Added content from other articles

During my revisions of several other articles, I have found additional information about the California electricity crisis that I have added to this article. Some of the information is duplicate information or simply phrasing of what has already been stated. I've tried to reduce the repeat information and I will keep trying but I would greatly appeciate any help from other editors in this effort. Thanks! calbear22 03:22, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I took out the bit about President Bush, because the crisis started in 2000 and Bush didn't become President until January, 2001. The FERC inaction spanned two administrations. --Gangster Octopus 16:46, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm a first time commenter here, so patience please. I read the part about sigining my name but am not even sure I have that right. I work in energy policy for the State of CA and enjoyed the article. There is much good and correct info here. I can understand not wanting to cater to unfounded conspiracy theories about the Republican admin, but as it is written now, it is far too lenient. Besides, factual things can be pointed too. Before getting the Bush administration, I take exception to a nonpartisanship approach based on the point that the problem started in the Clinton administration. Go ahead and tag the Clinton administration for earlier failures. Bush did come aboard into a crisis -- how he handled it is in question. I can't say the exact date, but I believe it was about a week before Bush's fist inauguration. Perhaps he was still on the heals of his BS campaign motto (approximately) "I'm not a divider." So he addressed the California issue saying that the Federal government was going to help California. Then I believe his soon to be appointed energy advisor whispered in his ear and Bush, BEFORE his inauguration said approximately, "California has made this problem for themselves and they are going to have to fix it themselves." I suppose it is conspiracy theory say that that energy advisor whispered, "You can take down one of your main opponents (Governor Davis) by letting California twist in the wind on this issue." Although this seems obvious to me, it is not essential for condemnation. Of course letting California rot for your own political gain is a monumental offense. What we do have factually, among other things, when Bush said that California would have to take care of its own problem, was that Bush was, in fact, a huge divider from inception. The Wikipedia article, in the section about "Deregulation" stated that the FERC felt understaffed to deal with the issue. Whether or not this is true, this is a particularly weak excuse. The truth is that the FERC and Bush are entrusted to uphold laws and they failed to do so. This is complete dereliction of duty. Governor Davis did not have the cajones to take on Bush, but what is a Wikipedia writer scared of? LMIrwin53 (talk) 20:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Revamping of Jan 2005

I seriously revamped most of this article in January 2005. Also expanded it. The most serious problem before revamping was the lack of any logic and a disjointed structure. Neither the nature of the crisis nor its causes were actually explained clearly. In case anyone is upset about the loss of "their" piece, I retained most of the original text and ideas - but moved them around so much that someone familiar with the previous article might not find them. Open to discussion. Caravaca 18:44, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POV Dispute of Jan 2004

blanked nonsense

I don't know what "nonsense" the previous user "blanked", but the article as of today takes the POV that:

  • California's changes to the electricity market were in no way to blame for the crisis
  • Bush should have helped, but refused for no good reason
  • Republicans were to blame

I don't think this is an objective look at the situation. Other analyses paint different pictures.

We should investigate a bit more, so we can report WHOSE IDEA it was to force utilities to "divest" themselves of their power generation plants. And WHAT BENEFITS these advocates claimed would accrue to rate-payers or others.

We should not bury the opposing POV in one short sentence at the end of the 3rd or 4th paragraph.

An alternative POV about the restructuring of California's electricity market is that:

  • it was doomed from the start, because it continued to regulate retail rates but not wholesale rates
  • it was not a case of "deregulation" at all
  • it was an experiment in socialism which failed, as in the Soviet Union where shoes and toilet paper always had low prices (but were rarely available)

This is one of the most biased articles I've ever seen at Wikipedia, and I've been here over 2 years! --Uncle Ed 19:42, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Ed, I really have no idea what you are talking about, if you read the article, it clearly lays blame for the crisis at the hands of a partial deregulation (i.e. dereg of wholesale but not retail). There were shenanigans on the part of the private sector as well, which were enabled by the partial deregulation. To get more into WHOSE IDEA, the utilities lobbied the legislature and it passed unanimously I believe. Steve Peace, the legislator who wrote/sponsored the law, I suppose could be blamed (coincidentally, he also brought the world Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.), but he hardly acted alone. Bush didn't bail them out, isn't that a good thing? dml 04:26, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Ed, the blame for the crisis lies with the failure of the legislators to deregulate, or rather re-regulate, the electricity market properly, the utilities for cutting a high risk deal to preserve their postion on stranded assets, the problems associated with environmental approvals for new transmission and generating plant, the rise in the price of gas, the drought in the northern catchment areas, the venal behaviour of some energy traders, the failure of the state to react properly to the crisis, the inappropriate intervention when it occurred and the lack of understanding by most of the parties as to the risks they were running in going ahead with the reforms.

I agree with you that the crap about Republican conspiracy should be removed and I have transferred the offending paras to here as they add nothing to the sum of human knowledge about what actually happened, but may be of interest to future editors:Tiles 05:42, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

"During the crisis, calls for Federal assistance were rejected by the Bush administration, and Davis was forced to agree to an enormous payout, costing the public billions. Despite the scandal's bringing of fraud indictments for a few CEO's, the energy corporations themselves were not held civilly liable for money some say was in effect stolen from the people of California. The deal that Davis made in effect wiped out any future chance for Californians to claim compensation by legal means.

Some even go so far as to charge that the entire energy crisis was orchestrated by Republican-allied corporate interests, to strike a political blow to the nation's strongest Democratic state, pointing to the fact that many of these energy companies were based in Texas and had close ties to the Republican Party and the Bush administration, and that the exact details of the Bush administration energy policy remains private (see Larry Klayman). It is not clear how many people actually believe this. No direct link has been proven, and neither Davis nor Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante resorted to such accusations in their 2002 re-election campaigns.

Many Republicans resent the accusation that the scandal was especially tied to their party, noting that Enron collapsed very early on in Bush's presidency, so that the majority of the fraud occurred under the Clinton administration. Furthermore, they point to the many corporate ties to the Democrats. For instance, the liberal Paul Krugman once sat on Enron's advisory board"

[edit] Timeline of crisis, rolling blackouts, etc.

I took a quick look at these articles:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2001/03/20/national1227EST0568.DTL http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/03/19/california.blackout.02/ http://www.iasa.ca/ED_news_LosAngelesTimes/LAtimes09.html http://news.com.com/Rolling+power+blackouts+darken+California/2100-1017_3-251091.html

..and added the dates I saw for rolling blackouts. There may have been other dates. Certainly, there were other important events in the crisis that should be added to the timeline. Please feel free to do so.

These URLs might also be added as external links, though some of them may represent copyright violations, so perhaps there are better sources.

--Beland 01:48, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This article is all over the place and very confusing. Hopefully I can clean it up.--Gangster Octopus 20:38, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Role of Governor Davis

Did he really say that he "inherited" the problem? I thought he advocated the bill which he signed - the one which restructured the electicrity generation industry in such a way that retail prices were capped (the article says "regulated", but this is vague) while wholesale prices were allowed to soar (the article says "deregulated").

I don't see any point more important than the disconnect between capping 'retail' prices while allowing wholesale prices to exceed them! How could Davis not know this would happen? Didn't he read the bill before signing it?

I'm not advocating anything here, but I wish this article would shed light on these questions. Uncle Ed 03:37, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

  • You absolutly are advocating something here, as in all your other posts, you're a GOP hack, with unlimited editing powers, nothing more--205.188.116.14 04:31, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • The deregulation legislation was passed prior to Davis' election by the Democratic Legislature and Republican Governor Wilson — a bipartisan created mess. Since it predated Davis' authority, the phrase "inherited" is correct. -- Cjensen

[edit] End of crisis

This article really needs a desciption of why the crisis ended. Note that the crisis peaked during spring, prior to the peak summer electricity usage -- a fact that an adequate explaination needs to address. Paul Krugman's described one possible reason here [1]. I assume there are other views that need to be described also. -- Cjensen 00:53, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

One source says that Enron's bankruptcy ended the problem. In fact, when Enron went bankrupt and "suddenly" and "coincidentally" prices got back to normal, first suspicions about Enron began to circulate. This factoid needs more confirmation, however. Caravaca 18:09, 26 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Regulation and Deregulation

The last paragraph in this section seems to just repeat several points made in the preceding paragraphs without adding or expanding on anything. This might be better deleted. Sdpurdy 03:33, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Power Markets

I think a lot of people are unclear as to how power markets actually work. An article or series of articles describing how power is generated and procured would help a lot. I believe there are twelve regions in North America under NERC.

I added more concise explanation in "Causes" section. In nutshell, price regulation created shortage of supply which provided ample opportunity of market manipulation. Vapour —Preceding comment was added at 12:45, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Can you explain it a better, because it is not clear how price regulation "forced" suppliers to ration power.--Gangster Octopus 16:24, 7 November 2007 (UTC)