CAISO Department Of Market Analysis has changed its mind about its statements that there was a true shortage of supply during the "Energy Crisis" of 2000-2001. This of course was the time that MEC was approved and the CEC sought to override the city of San Jose based on supply conditions. From the wording below it appears that the recent 100 day discovery period has revealed evidence of withholding to the CAISO experts.

(my emphasis added)
Page 5: The ISO's analyses of the cause of high prices in California have not concluded that those prices resulted from fundamental market factors to the exclusion of seller manipulation; moreover, given the evidence adduced by the California Parties, the ISO can no longer conclude that one fundamental market factor to which it previously attributed some price increases, namely supply scarcity, in fact existed.

Page 50: Since previous ISO analyses indicated a relatively small margin of potential scarcity during a very limited number of hours, I cannot conclude, in light of this new evidence of withholding, that there was any true scarcity at all during the 2000-2001 period.

caiso document (3.3Mbytes it's big because it is a non searchable scanned document with redactions, the full version may be available soon)

In other news of manipulation:

State, energy supplier settle
Mercury News
El Paso, the country's biggest natural gas company, has reached a settlement with California worth nearly $2 billion over charges that it manipulated natural gas prices during the state's energy crisis.

As part of the deal, announced Thursday night, the Houston-based company will pay $505.6 million to California ratepayers and give the state $900 million in free natural gas over the next 20 years.In return, California will drop a claim against El Paso that was pending before federal energy regulators. Nearly a dozen lawsuits pending against the company will be resolved as well.

The deal comes just days before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was expected to decide whether to uphold an administrative law judge's ruling that El Paso tried to manipulate the California gas market during the winter of 2000-01.

The FERC judge issued a tentative ruling in September 2002 that El Paso intentionally pinched gas supplies on its California pipeline in an attempt to drive up prices. The judge found that an El Paso subsidiary, El Paso Pipeline, withheld ``extremely large amounts of capacity'' during the energy crisis, operating pipes at just 79 percent of capacity.

In yet more news of manipulation, yesterday California, today Texas:

Dow Jones Business News
Texas Regulators Probe for Possible Power-Market Abuse
Tuesday, March 11, 12:09 PM ET

More than two dozen times on Feb. 24 and 25, real-time energy prices in Ercot reached $990 per megawatt-hour - about 18 times the average price seen the previous week, the PUC's market-monitoring unit said.

The exorbitant clearing prices tacked an additional $17 million onto power costs, which suppliers will collect and companies with an obligation to deliver electricity to customers must pay, the PUC's market-monitoring unit said.

The unit also is investigating discrepancies between the amount of power offered into the market and the amount that was actually available and the possibility that suppliers may have withheld power to push prices even higher.

The unit said it also is looking into whether collusion by power suppliers forced retail providers to obtain most of their electricity from the real-time power market, rather than through more stable bilateral contracts.

Some of these practices are similar to those energy companies are accused of using during California's 2000-2001 energy crisis.

Texas's market-monitoring unit identified 10 companies that submitted real- time energy bids above $300 a megwatt-hour during the two days in question -- Automated Power Exchange Inc., Austin Energy, City of Garland, LCRA and the wholesale power-marketing units of Exelon Corp. (NYSE:EXC - News) , FPL Group Inc. (NYSE:FPL - News) , Calpine Corp. (NYSE:CPN - News) , Mirant Corp. (NYSE:MIR - News) , TXU Corp. (NYSE:TXU - News) and Dynegy Inc. (NYSE:DYN - News) .

The market-monitoring unit has asked one of the companies to explain its bidding behavior and said it could seek information from others. The investigators wouldn't identify the company.