California electricity crisis | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 2019-01-15

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis


00:02:40 1 Causes
00:02:49 1.1 Market manipulation
00:06:03 1.2 Effects of partial deregulation
00:10:25 1.3 Government price caps
00:14:17 1.4 New regulations
00:16:45 1.5 Supply and demand
00:20:33 2 Some key events
00:23:29 3 Consequences of wholesale price rises on the retail market
00:26:06 4 Involvement of Enron
00:31:42 5 Handling of the crisis
00:31:52 5.1 Governor Gray Davis
00:37:16 5.2 Arnold Schwarzenegger
00:38:27 5.3 National Energy Development Task Force
00:39:09 5.4 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
00:40:35 6 See also



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SUMMARY
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The California electricity crisis, also known as the Western U.S. Energy Crisis of 2000 and 2001, was a situation in which the U.S. state of California had a shortage of electricity supply caused by market manipulations, and capped retail electricity prices. The state suffered from multiple large-scale blackouts, one of the state's largest energy companies collapsed, and the economic fall-out greatly harmed Governor Gray Davis' standing.
Drought, delays in approval of new power plants, and market manipulation decreased supply. This caused an 800% increase in wholesale prices from April 2000 to December 2000. In addition, rolling blackouts adversely affected many businesses dependent upon a reliable supply of electricity, and inconvenienced a large number of retail consumers.
California had an installed generating capacity of 45 GW.  At the time of the blackouts, demand was 28 GW.  A demand supply gap was created by energy companies, mainly Enron, to create an artificial shortage. Energy traders took power plants offline for maintenance in days of peak demand to increase the price. Traders were thus able to sell power at premium prices, sometimes up to a factor of 20 times its normal value. Because the state government had a cap on retail electricity charges, this market manipulation squeezed the industry's revenue margins, causing the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and near bankruptcy of Southern California Edison in early 2001.The financial crisis was possible because of partial deregulation legislation instituted in 1996 by the California Legislature (AB 1890) and Governor Pete Wilson. Enron took advantage of this deregulation and was involved in economic withholding and inflated price bidding in California's spot markets.The crisis cost between US$40 to $45 billion.