At 2 p.m. (PST) Monday, the Cal-ISO anticipated California wouldavoid rolling blackouts and have only some business interruptionsin northern California to get around the transmission bottleneckfor moving supplies south to north. The prognosis for Tuesday ispretty much as it was yesterday, said Cal-ISO’s COO KellanFluckiger, noting that they do not anticipate any unplannedoutages, which is always the wildcard in transmission gridmanagement in the midst of shortages of the magnitude thatCalifornia has faced for the past two months.

“This week looks better to me than last week, but the caveat isalways the weather and our ability to import power from the PacificNorthwest,” said Fluckiger, noting that another unknown is whetherthe state can get extensions of the emergency federal DOE ordersunder the new Bush Administration appointees. Cal-ISO officialswere scheduled at 2 p.m. (PST) to huddle with new DOE appointeesvia a telephone conference, Fluckiger said.

Another looming limitation facing the state is the amount ofvoluntary interruption of large industrial/commercial whosecontracts run out and would require further extensions from stateregulators to force these businesses to stay on the interruptiblerate schedules. These customers have been interrupted regularlyover the past six weeks.

Fluckiger said his sources indicated that because ofhistorically low inventories of natural gas for this time of year,daily balancing may be imposed, replacing the current weeklybalancing. “This could have significant impacts on price andavailability of natural gas,” he said, noting that it is anothercritical issue impacting the state’s over-taxed electricity system.Gas, in my opinion, is a major issue.”

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