Strictly Business: Notes on Deregulating Electricity
2001; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 42; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tech.2001.0145
ISSN1097-3729
Autores Tópico(s)ICT Impact and Policies
ResumoAs everyone reading this is surely aware by now, California's electric utility restructuring has gone badly awry. Unregulated wholesale prices for electricity have increased fourfold in the course of a year and over twelvefold on the spot market. In December 2000, power marketers priced gas-generated electricity that cost $250 a megawatt-hour to produce at $2,000 a megawatt-hour (the final negotiated price was $1,500). The state's Independent System Operator, which manages the "deregulated" power grid, accuses electric power generators and marketers of overcharging the state's power delivery companies by more than $6.2 billion between May 2000 and March 2001. Natural gas prices at the California border jumped to $30 per thousand cubic feet, six times the price elsewhere in the nation. With California's population accounting for 12 percent of the nation's and its $1.2 trillion gross state product accounting for 14 percent of America's GNP, this is hardly a provincial issue.
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