California electrical shortage audio

From my very “clever” moniker, I’m sure many can guess that I reside in Massachusetts. The State that is home to elected officials such as Senator Ted “My dog’s name is Splash” Kennedy, domicile to Willie “weekend furlough” Horton, as well as the mailing address of more than just a few of the countries finest liberal institutions and organizations. In short, not a state looked at as a benchmarking locale for conservative politic views.

Despite the political bent in Massachusetts, the commonweal accepted proposed legislation to deregulate the electric power generation industry. I state this to point out that an elected official’s political affiliations don’t necessarily play into the decision making process, at least it didn’t in Massachusetts

What drives deicsions such this? It’s shortsighted greed, simple myopic avarice. A trait that has found a happy home in both of our countries largest political parties; and let’s not forget about the supporters of said parties. Us. Short term black ink, and let’s hope for the best in the future. Ignatz made a great point about the proper use of our national resources. The natural gas price crunch has hit the country hard in the last few months; prices here have gone up close to 40% in one month alone. Even though most of the residents here would like to believe it, the “evil” local utilities are not to blame. The price increases are dictated by supply and demand and passed on, without profit to distribution companies and utilities, to the consumers. More clean burning gas power plants, a colder winter across the entire country, home usage increases, and viola, demand exceeds supply and distribution capacity.

Governor Wilson will (sadly) fail in providing the generation so badly needed for California, and importation at enormous cost will continue. The residents have been fed a political placebo by statements that new generation will be brought on line to combat the shortfall of reserves. He’s attempting to treat a compound fracture with iodine and Band-Aids. Long-term planning is necessary to avert the problems that California residents currently, and in the future, will face.

The supercilious blame directed toward political parties won’t fix it. Just look in the mirror to you’ll find the culprit.

OUCH! Think I broke my ankle falling off the soap box. Anybody got a Band-Aid?

My opinion, for watt (sic) it’s worth.

I wonder if we're going to see a sell off of Pass Labs equipment in California ? In my state with .05 cent / kwH electricity , I noticed my electricity bill went up by $20 a month when my aleph 2's landed. How much is California electricity now ?

Djjd - Bravo, well said. It's also worth noting that over population is the underlying cause. As the population steadily rises so will the shortages.

I live in Los Angeles and find it intersting that our public untility (DWP) has excess power and hasn't had a rate hike in more than eight years. Fewer fingers in the pie? Less raping and pillaging? Being in an all electric building, with dreaded radiant heat, this doesn't stop me from getting outragious bills during the "cold" winter months here. ;~)

As a resident of LA, I think that we all have a responsibility to help in the energy crisis here. I agree with most of the sound related posts that my amps sound harsh at first turn-on and about 95% after around an hour warm up. They still get a little better over a day or so. I really like how my system sounds after a long warm up.
That said, I am running Aleph 2 monos and at 600w/ hr just being turned on, that's not only a heap of change, but is a little irresponsible in light of the current (no pun intended) situation.
As far as the political tangent on this thread, I think one of our weaknesses as Americans is we often look to blame (or lynch) someone else for causing just about any problem. Everyone who consumes enregy is at least a part of the problem.
If we spent half as much energy trying to fix, or better yet prevent problems, rather than finding scapegoats, we'd be a hell of a lot better off. Responsibility is what helped make America great. I wish we all would accept a little more nowadays.
Now back to the thread from a pure audio sound/safety standpoint. Most of my equipment has built in protection. I also run pretty good conditioning/ surge protection on the lines. However, I have had several days in the last 5 mos where I return home and my preamp (Muse 3) is, for lack of a better word, "shorted". The LED lights are incorrect and I need to unplug and replug it to get it to work again. I also had a Faroudja DV-1000 fry one night this fall in spite of line conditioning. Fortunately, it was repaired for only a couple hundred bucks. My VCR's and clocks were reset at these times too, so it's wasn't isolated to the components. For these reasons, I turn my stuff off most of the time.
I turn off the amps due to the electricity shortage. I do admit that I justified leaving them on over the "cold" LA winter as they were serving as heaters for my home. (Pretty good rationalization anyway). Peace,

Todd