CAN CALIFORNIA AVOID ANOTHER ENERGY CRISIS?

摘要

Californians remember well the electricity crisis that began in 2000, when the wholesale price of electricity climbed precipitously. That summer, residents of San Diego saw their electricity bills more than double, and utilities like Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric―that could not immediately pass on higher wholesale prices to their customers―moved toward financial insolvency. By Christmas, power seemed to be in such short supply that homeowners were asked to curtail their displays of holiday lights, or at least delay turning them on until after 7:00 p.m. In early 2001, utilities in the state resorted to planned, short-lived electricity outages to protect the power grid from catastrophic failure when hundreds of needed megawatts couldn't be found.