And we can wonder whom they meant to serve, their shareholders or consumers. But as their proverbial wells run dry, nothing in this mess is clearer than where stupidity gets you. More than Money Problems Of course demand for electricity and gas is high. But California's power problems go beyond seasonal fluctuations in demand and low water levels at dams in the Pacific Northwest. The first problem is that population and industrial, particularly high-tech, growth rates have sent the state's power consumption through the roof.
Outages can cost millions of dollars a minute per company.
The utility companies have a difficult time meeting both the quantity and quality demands for two reasons. California does not produce enough power in state, and it does not have the infrastructure to transport enough of power or to transport it efficiently. The more power the state has to import along high capacity lines the more is lost. Once in California, the utilities have delivery infrastructures that are neither large enough nor new enough to meet the capacity and quality demanded by its customers. To save the whole system from crashing they've resorted to rolling blackouts.