Frontlines

Deck: 
Why power prices may have hit a new plateau, and what it all means.
Fortnightly Magazine - December 2000
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Frontlines

$$$/MWH???

 

 

Why power prices may have hit a new plateau, and what it all means.

The gloves didn't really come off until just after lunch, when Chairman James Hoecker returned at about 1:30 p.m. to take his center seat on the bench at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, to open the afternoon session at the FERC's umpteenth (and not last) hearing on last summer's troubles in California's electricity markets.

First Hoecker asked for quiet. The lunch break had been way too short, leaving the audience edgy. Hoecker had let the morning session drag on nearly a full hour past its schedule, as he often does.

Then the chairman fired up those newfangled and enormously expensive full-color flat-screen monitors placed strategically on either side of the hearing room, that give the FERC's hearing room a certain high-tech feel. Time to hear from California Gov. Gray Davis, who had chosen to mail in his testimony by videotape, rather than fly to Washington and explain in person why the feds owe it to his state to fix those skyrocketing prices.

"You are asking us to knuckle under for the next 10 years or so," Davis warned, in a calm but convincing baritone. "You agree that the market is dysfunctional.

You agree that prices are not just and reasonable. But you refuse to do anything about it. Apart from that, you are a fine group of people."

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