Despite anxious moments, California’s staggering grid systemheld together Wednesday, avoiding the rolling blackouts somein-state market participants feared would happen in the wake of thefederal emergency order expiring.

“Today looks like it will not involve rolling blackouts. I hateto say [it’s] normal because this is our twenty-third day of aStage Three alert,” said Don Dame, assistant general manager forregulatory affairs at the Northern California Power Agency (NCPA),a municipal power company. Dame said his agency had forewarned itscustomers that shortages might occur in the wake of the federalemergency order expiring. The municipal operates its own generationand has excess capacity but some of its customers are connected toPacific Gas and Electric Co. transmission lines and can be hit withrolling blackouts by the investor-owned utility.

Dame and his colleagues at the municipal power agency said”certain generators had threatened to withhold capacity intoCalifornia,” and because that capacity totaled about 20% (5,000 MW)of the projected daily peak demand, there might be “statewide andsevere controlled outages.” That never happened.

As of late afternoon, the state-chartered independent systemoperator (Cal-ISO) was waiting for the results of a federal courthearing in San Francisco. The court at the eleventh hour Tuesdayproduced a temporary restraining order to assure that ReliantEnergy keep providing power to the state despite separate courtaction it has taken in a Washington, D.C. federal district court toget assurances it eventually will be paid for past supplies to theCal-ISO that now total more than $300 million.

A spokesperson for Reliant said his company never intended tocut off power to the state, but it does want a resolution to thequestion of whether they will ever get paid by the Cal-ISO. As ofWednesday, the company still had not received any assurances, hesaid.

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