State Wants to Determine if Generators Gamed Prices As Power Failed in Storm
Rebecca Smith
The Wall Street Journal
2/7/2011
Texas officials have ordered an investigation into rolling blackouts that struck the state’s electric grid last week, including whether market manipulation played a role along with harsh weather in disrupting natural-gas and electricity supplies to millions of people.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas asked the state’s independent energy-market monitor, Daniel Jones, to conduct a probe to see if power generators, pipeline companies or others broke market rules. Among the questions are whether some firms faked power-plant problems to push prices higher, or were slow to restart plants that were off line.
Mr. Jones, vice president of Potomac Economics in Austin, said he could not comment until his team has completed its investigation, which could take weeks or months.
To be sure, Texas set an all-time winter power demand record one day during the storm, placing historic pressure on power providers.
Electricity-grid officials said Mr. Jones’ team will look at price patterns and power-plant outages remembering that, in California’s energy crisis of 2000-2001, unscrupulous power generators feigned equipment problems to drive up the price of electricity…
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