California ISO market monitor says wholesale prices down in 2006

[bananas]

http://www.platts.com/Electric%20Power/News/6377706.xml?src=rssheadlines0

California ISO market monitor says wholesale prices down in 2006

Washington (Platts)--20Apr2007

Wholesale electricity prices in California fell sharply in 2006 from the
previous year largely because of lower natural gas costs and an abundance of
hydro capacity, the Independent System Operator's independent Department of
Market Monitoring said late Thursday in its 2006 Annual Report on Market
Issues and Performance.

The monitor also said that the state grid and power markets performed
well last year, despite a 1-in-57-year heat wave that pushed the state to new
demand records.

The report said the average estimated cost of wholesale power in 2006
fell to $47.55/MWh from $57.83/MWh in 2006. The report said the figure
includes California markets and the estimated cost of bilateral energy
transactions that make up more than 95% of the state's energy needs.

<snip>

Further, the report said that for the first time in several years,
California saw a net loss of generating capacity in 2006, largely because of
the closing of the Mohave coal-fired plant in Nevada that was owned by
California utilities and was part of the ISO control area.

<snip>

[NNadir]

1. Um what happens when gas prices rise and hydro production goes down?

There's a little bit of a dodge here, too, in nothing that the cost of the dangerous fossil fuel natural gas has gone <em>down</em>. Compared to what?

Here are the natural gas prices for the last two decades:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9190us3m.htm

When California started on its gas burning binge in the 1990's, even though they had no plans to build a permanent repository for the dangerous fossil fuel waste that is killing on a planetary scale, the wellhead price of natural gas seldom went above $2.00 bucks per cubic foot. Now it's close to $6.00/cu. ft.

This is rather like saying that when gasoline prices fall from $3.50 to $2.50, we should all feel comfortable and buy Hummers, even though the Hummer craze started when gasoline was under $2.00/gallon.

By the way, the busbar cost of nuclear energy nationwide is under $20.00/MW-hr, external costs included. Natural gas burners ignore external costs, and goes under the assumption that it is perfectly OK to dump dangerous fossil fuel wastes into the atmosphere. That's a very, very, very dubious assumption.