Indicative of the banged up status of the state’s aging fleet ofpower plants, the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO)declared its first weekend Stage One Alert last Saturday despitethe fact that peak demand was only 36,000 MW.

It marked the first time also that the state-charteredtransmission grid operator has called any kind of alert — spurredby the prospect of reserves getting as low as 7% — when the peakdemand was under at least 40,000 MW, said Cal-ISO spokespersonPatrick Dorinson. He speculated that following several weeks of hotweather that have fully taxed the capacity of the in-stateelectricity generation, a number of generators used the weekend totake units out of service for routine maintenance.

“Saturday was not a (Cal-ISO-mandated) ‘No-Touch’ day,” saidDorinson, meaning the operators were not hamstrung by requirementsthat they defer maintenance.

Milder weather on Monday and forecasts for the rest of thispre-Labor Day week had the Cal-ISO optimistic it could avoid thecontinuation of the recent rash of Stage One and Two alerts, whichalready in 2000 have more than doubled the annual totals for thepast two years.

Last Friday at a special emergency meeting of the Cal-ISO’sBoard of Governors, the board decided against asking federalregulators to change the state nonprofit grid operator’s tariffs asa means of trying to prevent the chronic under-scheduling of loadin the state’s Power Exchange (Cal-PX). It was proposed by theCal-ISO staff as another means of trying to moderate the wholesalepower price spikes in summer peak-demand days.

It was but one of numerous proposals being kicked around bystate officials and energy industry participants to help bolsterreliability and lessen excess costs in California’s strugglingelectricity industry.

According to Cal-ISO records, under-scheduling has grown in theday-ahead market in the past two years from 19% (1998) to 30% sofar this year. For the hour-ahead, the jump has been from 13%(1998) to 29% (2000 so far). Correspondingly with considerablyhotter weather throughout the West and more limited generationavailable (in and out-of-state), the number of Stage 1 and 2 poweralerts called by the Cal-ISO has jumped to 38 so far this year,compared to 12 and 5, respectively, for 98′ and ’99.

Given this situation, California could formally ask FERC forpermission to require scheduling coordinators to schedule “no lessthan 90% of their actual load” for each settlement period in theirfinal day-ahead schedule and to schedule no less than 95% of actualload for each settlement period in their final hour-ahead schedule.It also could ask FERC to okay penalties for under scheduling byassessing scheduling coordinators with monetary penaltiesproportionally for deviations in scheduled loads, based on theISO’s incurred costs for buying extra, more-costly power to servetheir unscheduled loads.

The Cal-ISO staff wanted the state to make the argument that”these changes are necessary to address serious reliabilityproblems that have arisen due to scheduling coordinators’increasing failure [this summer] to include their loads andresources in forward schedules.”

However, a majority of the Cal-ISO board ultimately decidedFriday that there might be unintended consequences from mandating acertain percentage of load in the day-ahead market, and one ofthose might be discouraging new generators and suppliers fromentering the state’s power market, which currently is depending onan alarmingly high percentage (about 20%) of real-time emergencysuppliers through the Cal-ISO.

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