Dolly Aglay writing for Reuters has the best mainstream media write-up I’ve seen on this breaking story. Plus, INQ7 gave weblinks in their online article. Wow.
If there’s anything we learned from the 2000-2001 situation in California, it’s that you simply don’t listen the executive denials at this stage. You do the investigations. You take additional action to prevent market manipulation.
It appears that is exactly what Holopainen is doing.
If the market is indeed suspended for November and December, then at least there is much more transparency in system dispatch than there was under Napocor.
Remember – a fundamental purpose of the WESM is to conduct security constrained economic dispatch. You don’t have to have a competitive market to do that – that’s just one approach. But transparency in the process is good – and we have a lot more of that now, whether WESM is suspended or not.
Whether PSALM is found to have manipulated market prices or not, this has simply brought home a fundamental problem with PSALM’s holding on to some much of the generating assets. Any rational person has to ask “why would they NOT seek to manipulate prices upward?” Do you think they sit at home with their fingers crossed and hope?