I know your comment was facetious, but...the utilities don't have anything to do with the subject of this article, the independent system operator does (caiso). They control the generation and distribution of power, the utilities are simply users. The ISO is regulated by FERC and neither answers to nor contributes profits to the IOUs. You may be interested to know that in fact the regulated utilities that deliver you your power (what you think of as "the power company") are simply price takers on the day ahead and hour ahead auctions the ISO runs, they don't make money off that at all. They are regulated monopolies who's profits are determined by the regulating agency, in their case the CA PUC. It's worth doing a bit of research into how regulated monopolies like power companies work, it's probably nothing like you think. BTW, do you really live in California and use the term "cali"? Must be a SoCal thing if you do, that just sounds like a tourist saying "Frisco" to me having lived in the Bay Area.
At least you may be able to (barely) afford a house down there! Real estate is merely rediculously priced vs insanely priced in the Bay Area.
Actually not, I was kind of upset we paid our rate twice: once for generating electricity and once for paying someone else for using our electricity. Our SoCal Edison is smart enough to install smart meters to shut us off when the temperature reached 110 degree F in the summer because it is too hot and too many of us have to turn on the AC to survive the heat, so why aren't they smart enough to tell us to use our appliances or turn our appliances on when they have too much electricity and even better, pay us to use our AC when that happen? I know it is not that simple as you explained to me but I am just too dumb to understand why the line and generators and local utility cannot work something out to benefit the rate payers? Regards,