One would hope. Here is my concern:
First, if neither a Stage 2 or Stage 3 Alert was called, then as far as I can tell they are already violating procedures. That indicates the potential for pressure.
Second, it would seem to me that a quick failure of a single piece of equipment could cause that 1% dip in production capacity; i.e., that 1% is too close without shutting something down. Here is where I am ignorant and why I flagged you knowing that you had direct experience.
Thus (if my assumptions are correct), at that level of criticality I have a hard time believing that the procedures call for holding fast.
That means we might well be justified in asking if there was an order.
Under such circumstances, I don't have a problem envisioning a dispatcher going too close to the edge, especially if there is money in it.
You mean, like, from the Governor?
I think (and I am speculating) that I understand what you are saying. I also think that maybe I can put a few things in perspective.
There is an article on what Alerts, Warnings and Emergencies mean. It can be found at the following locaction
From what I read and understand, the graphs that show the available generation from which you calculated "reserves" are not the "available generation" The graph of available generation from what I understand, has been "artificially reduced or lowered" by 3%. Actually the key definitions are as follows:
Available Resources*: The current forecast of generating and import energy resources available to serve the demand for energy within the California ISO service area. Total Resources is comprised of dependable generation less outages and unavailable OFs, plus the expected imported supply. Available resources is equal to Total Resources less a 3% reserve margin*. (Calculation is detailed below.)
A 3% reserve ensures the California ISO's ability to respond adequately to an unanticipated emergency. In order to protect the integrity of the Grid, the California ISO may declare a Stage Three Emergency when the system's Operating Reserver is forecast to be at or below 1.5% or less than the largest contingency within the service area (estimated to be 3%)..
So during the 3PM hour when the total generation (not discounted for reserves) exceeded load by only 694 MW or 1.6% of total generation, your question is why was only a Stage 1 Emergency declared?
I think we can both agree that probably they were on the ragged edge of a Stage 3 Emergency. The details also show that Total resources increased during the 4 PM hour. Things collapsed pretty quickly and it is clear that the ISO does not have a decent forecasting process.
According to the SOP's, should the ISO have declared Warnings the day before and Alerts the hour before? Yes! However, again, I don't think they have a good enough forecasting process to do that. Does this mean that the ISO shouldn't start a crash course in forecasting techniques. Nope, they should be able to do a lot better.
Could a single large machine fail and exceed 1% (435 MW) or 1.5% (652 MW) of the total generation which was 43504 MW? Yes, there are some large Nuc's that could have dropped that much load in a scram or turbine failure mode.
Does this mean that a Stage 2 or 3 Emergency should have really been called when a Stage 1 Emergency was called instead? That is an excellent question!
If that was your question instead of why wasn't a Stage 2 or 3 Alert called, I think you have a question that should be put to the Cal ISO. I would speculate that the answer they will give is that very early into the 3PM hour they placed an emergency order with the Bonneville Power Administration (or BC Hydro or other large power producer) to provide a significant enough increase in Total and available generation to know that they would not need to declare a Stage 3 Emergency during the 4 PM and later hours. None-the-less, I'll bet somebody was sweeting blood during the last half of the 3PM hour to make sure a power plant didn't go down somewhere in California.
Your point is very well taken, this probably was really on the ragged edge of a Stage 3 Emergency and you are right to raise the question of did somebody fudge the SOP's. I suspect that the answer is tied to the inacuracy of the ISO forecasts and that somebody form outside the region stepped in to help out, big time.