>Evan,
>
>>I used to find Denis Miller bright and insightful with his humor. Over the last year or so he has started to become...um... less insightful and more of an uninformed whiner. He did not understand that the California energy crisis was caused by deregulated power plants gouging the consumers. He thought that environmentalists were preventing the building of new plants.
>
>Humor generally needs to have an element of truth in it in order to be funny.
>
>I presume you can connect the dots... <g>

Hmmm. . .

I suspect that the 'environmentalists' provided an ideal excuse for the generators to stop building.

But I also suspect that the generating companies were very much out to make their balance sheets look as attractive as possible too - especially with deregulation and the fast-paced (at the time) stock market - so anything that could put more cash on the bottom line (ie no capital expenses 'reducing' profit) the better thay looked. Building more generating capacity sure wouldn't help that!

I saw a guy from one of the Texas power companies in a news clip. When told that it sure looked like they were gouging the consumers he curtly replied (paraphrasing) 'We definitely are not gouging. People are still buying from us, aren't they?'. Like people can just stop using electricity, or have a choice as to who they buy it from (on a day-by-day basis)!?!?!?

I also find it real hard to believe that power usage has been increasing "dramatically" over the last 15 years. After all, lots of manufacturing closed shop in CA, shutting outright or moving offshore/Mexico.
The media says that PCs are the cause. I've really got to wonder about that when I look at my hookup that has two power bars of 5 plugs each fully loaded out of a single wall plug. If I plugged even 5 of almost anything else into a single plug I'd blow the fuse for sure.

The unfortunate thing is that no matter how this plays out the GREEDY power companies win regardless.
By holding up planning/building more generation capacity they get to 'fast-track' (read ignore the environmental impact) new plants.
And even if price controls stay, the pricing will be much much higher than is otherwise warranted. In other words, they created a power shortage (mainly by not even spending $ to keep existing plants in good repair, let alone building more) and then reap the benefits of "supply and demand". A supply they control in total.

I think the oil companies did a very similar thing. In their case there were lots of mergers over the last 2-3 years. They found themselves owning refineries that used to compete with each other in countless locales. Each of these competing refineries might have been operating at an average 35-70% capacity.
It made business sense to close nearby (each other) refineries. Now the single refinery could operate at 70-100% capacity. But that left no room at all for peaks and greatly extended the impact of shut downs necessitated by maintenance/failures.
Made for a much better looking bottom line but also for an inability to meet peak demand (which could last over several weeks or more). Again the lack of supply was self-induced, yet they come out big winners regardless.

I think that the free enterprise system is great BUT it does rely on a modicum of INTEGRITY to operate correctly.

Cheers
JimN