Our problem is that we can’t produce enough power (or at least we couldn’t) so we had to buy it on the open market. The grid didn’t have much to do with it, it was the power generation infrastructure itself. Thanks to the enviros we can’t get any new power plants built.
Enron exploited that by shutting down plants for maintenance during peak hours so rates went up by orders of magnitude instead of a few cents. People’s electric bills jumped from $300 to $1500/mo.
That’s also why solar is so huge, it was the only thing PG&E could get approved. Of course our grid wasn’t designed for large amounts of localized solar power fed back into the grid, which has opened up a whole other can of worms.
Our problem is that we can’t produce enough power (or at least we couldn’t) so we had to buy it on the open market. The grid didn’t have much to do with it, it was the power generation infrastructure itself. Thanks to the enviros we can’t get any new power plants built.
Enron exploited that by shutting down plants for maintenance during peak hours so rates went up by orders of magnitude instead of a few cents. People’s electric bills jumped from $300 to $1500/mo.
That’s also why solar is so huge, it was the only thing PG&E could get approved. Of course our grid wasn’t designed for large amounts of localized solar power fed back into the grid, which has opened up a whole other can of worms.