Exactly what that means to the company and to its 11 million customers is anyone's guess. The power exchange is essentially a state-sponsored commodities trading floor, where utilities who deliver the power, and generators who create, meet to buy and sell capacity on a daily basis. It was created as part of the state's power utility deregulation program.
Utilities pay the exchange, which in turn pays the power generators.
With any other commodity, that would translate into rate hikes, which Rosemead, Calif.-based SCE proposed, only to be slapped down by the state's public utilities commission. Meanwhile, California Gov. Gray Davis is floating a bailout plan to get the state government into the business of buying and reselling power to the state's utilities. But that doesn't seem to be winning much support either. But the longer the state plays power salesman, the longer it will take for the utilities to figure a way out of the mess themselves, likely prolonging the crisis. And to some extent, the power companies are themselves to blame.