The California Electricity Crisis (Hoover Institution Press Publication, No. 503.)

James L. Sweeney

"California began the decade of the 1990s with a vertically integrated electric power system that had been working reasonably well under regulation. Still, there were opportunities for improvement. Although some reasons offered for restructuring were unrealistic, sufficiently valid reasons existed to proceed. There was, however, risk from the very beginning that things could go wrong - and go wrong they did.". "The restructuring, often mischaracterized as "deregulation," put the state and the investor-owned utilities in an inappropriately risky economic position. The risks became realities as the perfect storm hit California's electric system. The western states failed to build new generation capacity to match their growth in power consumption. Problems became apparent in the new California wholesale markets. Low rainfall in the Pacific Northwest curtailed hydroelectric generation...

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