Pacific Gas & Electric declared a systemwide Stage 2 high-inventory OFO for Saturday. Penalties were $1/Dth for exceeding a 5% tolerance on positive daily imbalances. The utility noted that high-inventory OFOs have occurred during the Fourth of July weekend every year since 1998, the year OFOs were first implemented on its California Gas Transmission system.

Southern California Gas took the unusual step of waiting until Friday afternoon before issuing its own high-linepack OFO for Saturday with the usual 10% tolerance for negative imbalances. Earlier it had offered this caveat to customers: “Due to confirmation problems between Transwestern Pipeline and SoCalGas for gas day 7/1, this resulted in scheduled volumes being reduced by approximately 160,000 [dekatherms] for Cycle 2 on Transwestern Pipeline. Consequently, this affected the OFO calculation for the Timely Cycle, gas day 7/2. An OFO should have been declared. Therefore, this is to alert the marketplace that to the extent Timely Cycle scheduled volumes for gas day 7/2 exceed system capacity, an OFO will be declared for the Evening Cycle, gas day 7/2.”

Florida Gas Transmission extended an Overage Alert Day notice for the market area into its fifth day Friday. But after loosening the tolerance for negative daily imbalances from 20% to 25% Wednesday, the pipeline reverted to a 20% tolerance Friday.

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