Electricity became more valuable than gold this summer--or at least more valuable than finished aluminum ingots.

At the beginning of June, 270 workers at Ormet Corporation aluminum plant in Hannibal, Ohio, were laid off for the summer when the company concluded that it was more profitable to sell the electric power normally used in its smelting operations than to manufacture aluminum. And that was true even after the company paid its workers benefits and supplemented their unemployment checks so that they took home 70 percent of their base pay.