Volumes and prices of spot electricity bought by California in March increased above the first two months of this year, according to statistics released last week by the state’s power-buying agency, the Department of Water Resources (DWR). For the first two months of the year, the state continued to sell excess power at about half the price it paid for it. No sales statistics were released for March.

DWR bought 864,000 MWh of spot supplies at an average price of $39/MWh, substantial increases over February when the total was 637,000 MWh for an average of $32/MWh. Total overall cost for power was up in March when the DWR spent $282 million, compared to $255 million in February 2002. (In the midst of last year’s crisis the state spent from $1.7 to $1.8 billion/month for four consecutive months, February through May.).

Average overall cost of all the power purchased by the state in March stayed at $84/MWh, and the $45/MWh difference between the total average and the spot averages represents the relatively higher costs of the DWR’s long-term, fixed-price supply agreements signed in the middle of the state’s electricity crisis last winter and early spring. Through the end of March, DWR had spent $12.4 billion for wholesale net short power supplies spread over 14 and a half months.

The state’s sales of excess power continued to go down in February and the average price went up, but it was still less than half of the average spot purchase cost, and a small percentage of the average overall costs. In February, the state sold 130,000 MWh at an average price of $17.94/MWh; in January, those corresponding numbers were 157,000 MWh for an average price of $15.28/MWh.

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