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Very interesting, one trade doesn't sound like a lot.

I thought you might be interested in an email I sent to a reporter who talked about Corporate Greed and power trades.

(Name) there are wash sales and there are wash sales. If I sell a flat block of 10 MW for a full hour to somebody and buy it back over the course of the same full hour from the same party over the same transmission path, that looks pretty bad.

If on the other hand, I sell to company X 1 MW for every minute of the day and ask them to put that in a hydro reservoir that I can draw upon when needed for peaking, reserves, or other ancillary services, and during a single hour, ask for 24MW back or ask for 96 MW back during a single 15 minute period, then the "1 MW wash sale" during that short time span might not look quite as dishonest.

Similarly if I have nonfirm I am selling and someone is selling me back firm power, at a higher rate and from a different source, then the transaction might not look so bad. Before, I would agree to it I would want some iron clad guarantees.

Likewise if I am selling a block of power over on a transmission path to get to a company that can sell me power over a different transmission path that I can not get access on, the transaction might not look quite so bad.

The real issue is that the context of the transaction changes depending on the details.

Having given my little Pollyanna speech, I expect that when the dust settles the SEC, FERC, and the Justice Department will find folks who have violated real rules, real regulations and real laws. If that is the case, I hope they throw the book at these folks who have tarnished the image of the power professsion.

(name), a former power manager.

It really is a different world.

Now this I come closer to understanding a good reason for!
To me this could be described as stockpiling energy for later use!

The real issue is that the context of the transaction changes depending on the details

These round trips are not a concern regarding pricing. The issue is transmission saturation ....ie. band width if you will.

The issue is when the gray (not a profit or a loss) comodity is transmitted through the grid.

Transmitting the gray sale and "clogging the grid" to prevent a buyer from getting power he can purchase from your competitior (at one half the price you would charge) because you clogged the line with your own purchases is the issue here.

Good letter.

Also, people decrying these "round trip trades" fail to understand grid-reliability issues. Sometimes you need to buy extra power "just in case". If it ends up not being needed, and the seller agrees to buy it back at the same price, the two companies have done the consumers a favor.

Did Home Depot agree to buy back all those portable generators they sold just before Y2K? Of course not. But nobody is calling them "greedy capitalists".

The problem with the premise of your pathetic milquetoast email to the reporter is you don't understand the free market or you're too much of a wimp to simply declare to this reporter or to idiot b*tch socialists like Barbra Boxer and imbecile Oregon senator Ron Widen that the price reflects whatever the market will bear. And that Enron, Reliant, et al ARE NOT TO BLAME FOR A F***ED FROM THE START ENERGY TRANSMISSION GRID POLICY THAT CALIFORNIA idiot liberal-socialist politicians implemented pandering to the idiot voters. Typical lazy, do-nothing corner-cutting politicians that think they can pass the buck to "evil-rich-white-corporate" taxpayers.

And I can guaran-damn-tee-ya that the crooked California ISO employees and directors will NEVER be held accountable and will be allowed to skate free. Because as long as timid wimp power traders are too damn intimidated to stand up for their industry and their company, then chimp brains like Barbra Boxer and Ron Widen will just continue to b*tch slap the timid power traders all across the senate hearing rooms on national television for all the nation to see and for the people to continue to believe wrongly that the energy traders are evil and should be punished. It's too damn bad that the "energy traders" and employees that have testified at these bogus senate hearings could not have taken the cue from former Enron CEO JEFF SKILLING when he stood up to these idiot senators and did not let them stupidly and dishonestly misstate facts. It was refreshing to see Skilling shove their lies back in their faces and boldly and angrily interrupt the idiot grandstanding senators from babbling nonsense and lies. Do you not wonder why there have not been any traders from either Pennsylvania or Atlanta Georgia systems that serve 5 states? It's because they have proven the overwhelming success of deregulation.