A Hazard Rate Analysis of Mirant’s Generating Plant Outages in California (Jan-04)

A model of generator withholding is critical for analyses of market power. The California electricity market crisis of 2000-2001 saw increased utilization of fossil fuel plants. The stressed conditions could have affected normal outage rates. A hazard rate analysis applied to the Mirant generating plants indicates that higher utilization should increase outage rates. The predicted crisis outage rates should have been higher than the historical average. Actual outage rates were significantly lower than would be predicted based on pre-crisis behavior.