On Wednesday, FERC made a new effort to hold down California's electricity prices without forsaking its commitment to energy deregulation, earning another round of sharp criticism from California officials. Fifteen year later, during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal battle against powerful utility holding companies, the commission was armed with the authority to regulate rates for wholesale electricity bought by utilities, and for power transmission.
States regulate retail rates.
Today FERC makes rules for the nation's transition away from regulated utility electric service to a market-based hybrid. In California and many major states, powerful generating companies compete to sell electricity to utilities, which act as distributors. The responsibilities have taxed FERC's staff of 1,200, which is about 10 percent less than peak levels during the mid-1990s. A backlog of 2,000 pending cases includes not just conflicts over power prices, but also critical issues of reorganizing the nation's power transmission network into large regional pools strong enough to make urgently needed investments in new lines. When Congress set electricity deregulation in motion in 1992, FERC's goal became seeing that it succeeded.