Hi Niclas,

I am in the middle of preparing some presentations right now, so it might be 
more productive to speak by phone (503-464-8430).  Please leave your number, 
if you get my voicemail.

To get you started, you might see if you can get access to the FERC GADS 
database of plant forced and planned availability.  It seems others in 
Research have asked about this, so you may already have this at your 
disposal.  The EIA has a good electronic database of plant FOR and POR 
available for free (http://www.nerc.com/~esd/).  I know Alexios in RE/EES has 
this.  If you wanted to do it the hard way, you can also ask Jaison to access 
the EPA's CEMS data he has summarized on a machine there in Research.  It 
contains hourly plant operation for every unit over about 50MW, which you 
could aggregate up.

The WSCC 10-year forecast of new plant construction and loads is a good place 
to start for plant construction information, but suffers from some notorious 
"self-reporting" error.  It is available in pdf form from the web site 
http://www.wscc.com/.  Other sources that should be more near-term, but more 
accurate are the CEC inventory of plants (http://www.energy.ca.gov/) and the 
BPA Whitebook (http://www.transmission.bpa.gov).

As far as basic economic data is concerned, you can either rely on the 
reported utility forecasts for loads, or you can go to fundamental data.  The 
ultimate source of the census data collected by the US Dept of Commerce, 
which you can buy on CDROM for cheap.  It would have this kind of information 
by SIC code, by ZIP code.  You may also have access to one of the economic 
forecasting businesses (Wharton's WEFA, DRI, etc.)  They have this in highly 
digested and complete form.

BTW, Tim Heizenrader, who runs Fundamental Analysis and Research on the West 
Desk, is a sharp cookie and should have all this under control.  Is your 
client aware of this resource?

Give me a buzz and we can talk more,
Michael

>>> Niclas Egmar/HOU/EES@ENRON 08/14/00 12:49PM >>>
Michael,

I'm an analyst in the research group. I would like your help with finding 
some information specific for the West Coast. A new analyst on the West Power 
desk needs information on planned outages and planned new generation. He is 
studying the long-term fundamentals of electricity volatility on the West 
Coastso so he also needs info on housing starts, computer sales or industrial 
production figures for computer manufacturing, growth of start-up companies, 
and population stats.

Any help in finding the needed info would be greatly appreciated. Contact me 
or Daniel Kang (new analyst).

Niclas 
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