In the aftermath of a three-fold increase in residential electricity bills in San Diego, and the resulting legislative price cap, my friend Cheryl Morgan suggests some things that California can learn from the English experience of deregulation.
First, build more capacity. But the NIMBY problem has killed one plan to put a new plant in San Francisco, and may stop another plan to build a gas turbine in south San Jose.
Second, residential customers should buy electricity on contract in order to protect themselves from price volatility:
“In San Diego that didn’t happen; all of the price risk was passed on to customers. That’s the electricity equivalent of banning pension plans and forcing everyone to become day traders.”
Possibly Related posts (machine generated):