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THIS is nasty, shades of Enron . . . TransAlta ‘deliberately’ drove up power prices, Utilities Commission findsCalgary’s TransAlta “deliberately” took actions that had an “anticompetitive purpose” and could have made the private company up to $100 million, according to a mammoth 217-page decision released Monday by the Alberta Utilities Commission. In 2011, Market Surveillance Administrator (MSA), an electricity-market watchdog in Alberta, filed anti-trust allegations against TransAlta, a privately owned electricity-generation company with facilities across Canada and the United States. Those allegations stemmed from TransAlta’s decision in 2010 and 2011 to shut down all six of its coal generation plants for maintenance for several days during peak electricity demand in Alberta. That decision ultimately saw the price consumers paid for electricity spike. Alberta’s electricity market is the only deregulated power market in Canada. MSA alleged to the Commission that TransAlta’s plant shutdowns were timed to have a positive effect on electricity prices, though, in February, TransAlta argued its actions “would not attract any anti-trust scrutiny under the Competition Act in Canada.” But in its ruling Monday, the Commission found TransAlta “engaged in this conduct for an anticompetitive purpose” and further, that this behaviour was “deliberate.” Yet while the ruling may seem like a win for Alberta consumers, David Gray, president of Gray Energy Economics and the former executive director of the Utilities Consumer Advocate with the Alberta government, said it has only materialized because other electricity companies may have been harmed. “I’m no more ticked off than I was before,” Gray said after reading the ruling. “The long and the short is [deregulation] has given companies the opportunity and the ability to drive up the price of power in non-competitive ways.” Gray added that it came to light because the price affected others inside the electricity market. “If it had only affected customers, it wouldn’t have been an issue.” The phrase ‘price fixing’ does not appear in the Commission’s ruling. Jim Law, a spokesperson with the Commission, said Monday’s ruling is the first of several phases to the body’s work. Next, he said, will be the penalty phase. However he was aware that TransAlta still has the right to appeal the ruling. The timing of the penalty phase is an unknown, he said. “I don’t have a date. Fairly shortly, we’ll issue a letter that answers some of the questions.” |
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Msg # | Subject | Author | Recs | Date Posted |
84939 | Re: THIS is nasty, shades of Enron . . . TransAlta ‘deliberately’ drove up power prices, Utilities Commission finds | rfk | 1 | 7/28/2015 1:57:02 PM |