All told, the state's energy commission has been asked to approve construction of 14 power plants. This would significantly improve the current situation. Nationally, the response has been similar, said Jeffrey K. Skilling, president of Enron, the Houston company that is the world's leading trader of electricity and natural gas. Enron reports that power companies have announced plans to add nearly 240,000 megawatts in new North American generating capacity, increasing supply by more than one-quarter. But regulators and some other utilities are less sanguine.
Electricity is a unique commodity, they say.
First, power consumption varies widely, with summer peak demand 20 percent or more higher than average. Second, there is no substitute for electricity. It undergirds modern life, and while demand can be marginally reduced by briefly closing factories, turning off air conditioning and elevators in office buildings, even those slight reductions cause significant disruption. When all the plants in a region are running at full steam, there is simply no way to get more power. Those factors mean that as power demand approaches peak supply in a deregulated market, generators can charge 10 or 100 times the normal price for electricity and know that they will find takers.