CAISO just ended a morning press conference which I don't believe any major media organization followed fully. Some of the specifics they gave were: Of the 11,000 megawatts which are currently offline, 4,000 megawatts are offline due to maintanance of plants, and 7,000 megawatts are offline due to "forced outages". Of the forced outages, 2,000 megawatts are offline due to lack of water for hydroelectric generators. One of the major reasons given for today's rolling blackouts being a) worse then yesterday, b) so much earlier and at a lower load is that yesterday they used today and tomorrow's water resources for hydroelectric plants in order to keep blackouts minimized yesterday. They are anticipating reducing the rolling blackouts to 500 megawatts for the duration of the business day due to a larger then anticipated impact from power conversation requests. However, the peak power usage which begins at 5pm, maxes at 6pm, and lasts until 10pm, is expected to cause large rolling blackouts potentially from 6-9pm in both northern and southern California. They are also anticipating 3000-4000 megawatts coming back online in upcoming weeks, but only 28,000 megawatts are actually being generated within California so the struggle to import power from outside generators will continue. The next ISO press conference will occur at 1pm this afternoon. -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/humble PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177 (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)