But California typically shoots juice north in the winter, and a shortage of power there means Northwest utilities have been forced to shop more regularly in the high-priced spot market to meet their load, or demand. As rate increases ricochet around the region, more than one official is casting a suspicious eye south. Somehow, the lights stayed on, which meant they had generating capacity somewhere. The system had enough. Now there's a 30,000-megawatt load because of cooler weather, and they're operating in a perpetual state of emergency.
Someone needs to answer that question.
So far, the disappearance of about 15,000 megawatts of energy in California is the subject of lawsuits, federal inquiries, academic studies and investigations by a half-dozen California agencies, as well as the attorneys general of Washington and Oregon. Discovering precise reasons for the steep climb in prices will drive solutions, to the crisis, such as the extent to which environmental laws are loosened to encourage construction of new plants, and whether government regulation or market forces dictate future prices. Suspicion falls on suppliers For now, though, angry fingers are pointing to for-profit electric suppliers, many of them based in Texas and the East Coast. They say some of their plants were off line for maintenance, while others were fitted for pollution-control devices and still others broke down. Those with natural-gas generators also say steep increases in the price of fuel have added millions to operating costs, forcing them to charge wholesale prices for electricity that are hundreds of dollars in excess of last winter's prices.