Consumed

While the financial and political sectors are consumed with what last week’s revelations about wholesale power market manipulation will mean to the energy industry, California’s independent electric transmission grid operator, Cal-ISO, is focused on the broader market power abuses as the potential malfunctions that have the broadest, longest lasting and most costly impact. Relatively, the market power costs are in the billions of dollars, while the market manipulation of the kind described in the infamous Enron internal memos (see Daily GPI, May 9) collectively costs maybe hundreds of millions, according to Cal-ISO sources.

Bankruptcy-consumed Pacific Gas and Electric Co. last week responded to state regulatory requirements by notifying the consumer branch of the California Public Utilities Commission of its intent to file a 2003 general rate case for $478 million, taking up the slack from reductions in the 4-cent/kWh surcharge that has been effective since mid-2001.