Illinois Energy Cost May Spike

These people are running ads that say we are headed for a california style energy crisis. ComEd has already claimed if they don't to raise rates they will go bankrupt. Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity (CORE) spent 4 mil' to try and convince people here that they are not a big company, Exelon, pretending to be a concerned citizens group. Who thinks we citizens should be paying more for our electricity, or else.

Tapes Show Enron Arranged Plant Shutdown
By Timothy Egan
The New York Times

Friday 04 February 2005

EVERETT, Wash - In the midst of the California energy troubles in early 2001, when power plants were under a federal order to deliver a full output of electricity, the Enron Corporation arranged to take a plant off-line on the same day that California was hit by rolling blackouts, according to audiotapes of company traders released here on Thursday.

The tapes and memorandums were made public by a small public utility north of Seattle that is fighting Enron over a power contract. They also showed that Enron, as early as 1998, was creating artificial energy shortages and running up prices in Canada in advance of California's larger experiment with deregulation.

The tapes provide new details of market manipulation during the California energy crisis that produced blackouts and billions of dollars of surcharges to homes and businesses on the West Coast in 2000 and 2001.

In one January 2001 telephone tape of an Enron trader the public utility identified as Bill Williams and a Las Vegas energy official identified only as Rich, an agreement was made to shut down a power plant providing energy to California. The shutdown was set for an afternoon of peak energy demand.

"This is going to be a word-of-mouth kind of thing," Mr. Williams says on the tape. "We want you guys to get a little creative and come up with a reason to go down." After agreeing to take the plant down, the Nevada official questioned the reason. "O.K., so we're just coming down for some maintenance, like a forced outage type of thing?" Rich asks. "And that's cool?"

"Hopefully," Mr. Williams says, before both men laugh.

The next day, Jan. 17, 2001, as the plant was taken out of service, the State of California called a power emergency, and rolling blackouts hit up to a half-million consumers, according to daily logs of the western power grid.

So they are going shutdown power plants and drive up prices and laugh at the rolling blackouts? The Citizens utility Board, CUB breaks down their claims. I don't think they are hurting either.