Re: CA Electric Deregulation - Tom's Comment

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

Bill said, in part:

> . . .It didn't work well in CA for a lot of reasons,
> a major 
> one being that the elected government of that great state established
> too 
> many rules that restricted the ability of the investor owned
> utilities to 
> respond rapidly to changing market conditions, such as occurred
> during the 
> power shortage in 2000/
> 
> Among other things, the rules required that participating companies
> sell  
> their generating capacity, buy all of their electricty from a state
> 
> monopoly, CalPX, and thus not be able to enter into long term
> contracts, a 
> standard way of reducing the effect og temporary supply shortages. 
> The 
> companies also had rate caps established, which caused them to have
> to sell 
> the electricity that they bought at a loss, forcing them into
> bankrupcy and 
> increaing the reluctance of suppliers to do business with them.
> 
> Other causes were the failure of CA to build enough generating
> capacity to 
> meet population growth and the overreliance of hydropower from the
> north to 
> make up the difference.  
> 
> In the final analysis, the people of CA are responsible for electing
> as their 
> representatives people who are beholden to  an outmoded, leftist
> philosophy. . . 

I'm sure that energy companies buying and selling energy to each other
when nothing changed hands but the money didn't help. ;-)

If these things they admitted, God only knows what they did that they
haven't copped to.  I'd wouldn't put it in the leftist or rightist camp
-- I put it in the crap category, too.

And that's as political as I've gotten in a very long time - apologies
to the list.

Scott H.

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