High-tech businesses gobbled megawatts for lunch. We're all free-market maniacs now. The markets were supposed to create efficiency, unaided. But they haven't. So while we work out the problems and wait for new plants to come online, we need to spread the available power around.
Energy conservation needs a big push.
The Bush administration has blinders on when it cuts conservation spending and plays down the need. But a market-based question has also entered the conservation debate. Most consumers don't realize that the wholesale price of power changes at various times of day. Prices spike when demand is high, say on summer afternoons, and fall at night when most offices have closed. But most of us pay a constant price per hour, whether we use expensive hours or cheap ones.