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Free e-mail OT but real news April 5, 2001 CNET | Web Building Dispatch California's fake power shortage California's power crisis directly affects the technology economy, and there's no solution in sight. I'm getting regional this week, but CNET is headquartered in California, so we get firsthand experience with this power problem. From the ground level, rolling blackouts don't seem so bad. Work shuts down for a couple of hours, small groups of people congregate in the halls, cell phones light up, and you might have to reset the VCR when you get home. But when sites go down--especially retail sites--money is lost. Online consumers are fickle enough that if they can't buy right when they're thinking of it, then they either won't, or they'll go to another source. Business-to-business sites can usually withstand a two-hour delay, as contracts and approval take a little longer. Considering the downturn in the economy, this is not the time to be having a power crunch, and the really sad thing is that there's no good reason for it. Unlike the power crisis of the '70s, we're not really low on power, despite President Bush's exploitation of this situation as a reason to allow oil companies to drill in U.S. national monuments and parks. California's power deregulation experiment set up a system where power generators could charge excessive rates, and utilities would be forced to pay to maintain supply. Many generators that haven't been paid by the cash-strapped utilities are withholding supply. The state needs to help the utilities to pay their debts, while power prices have to be capped in order to allow a reasonable profit margin for generators. And watch out for power deregulation legislation in your own countries and states. > > The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. > > > > > > To join or quit silver-list or silver-digest send an e-mail message to: > > > [email protected] -or- [email protected] > > > with the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the SUBJECT line. > > > > > > To post, address your message to: [email protected] > > > Silver-list archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html > > > List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]> > > >
