One of California’s two newest energy regulators Tuesdayadvocated that the state re-regulate parts of its restructuredelectric industry and re-establish some power he said it has cededin the process to the federal government. The plea was part of apress conference in San Diego designed to assuage concernedelectricity customers whose bills have doubled and tripled due to asummer peak-load price and supply crunch.

Although he was careful not to take sides in several pendingemergency proposals before the California Public UtilitiesCommission (CPUC) to address the high electric bills, Carl Wood, aformer statewide utility union leader, said one of the steps thatought to be considered is the ability of the state to mandate theconstruction of new generation plants if the private sectornonutility market does not provide adequate generation. Wood didnot comment on the more than a dozen new generating plants underconstruction or in the state’s approval process.

Wood plans to push the CPUC to do its own investigation —ordered earlier this summer by Gov. Gray Davis, who appointed himto the regulatory agency — of whether market abuses and”collusion” among generators were part of the recent price spikesand power shortages. He specifically said that he does not thinkthe market monitoring committees of the two state entities createdas part of California’s de-regulated electricity industry-theIndependent System Operator (Cal-ISO) and Power Exchange(Cal-PX)-are impartial enough to do the job because they areoperated under “stakeholder” boards that have a vested interest inthe continued deregulation of energy.

(As Wood was conducting his session at the southern end of thestate, the Cal-ISO in Sacramento declared a State 2 power alertbecause of forecasts for peak demand during the day of more than40,000 MW and because the state is missing 3,100 MW inout-of-service generation. The record of 45,884 MW was reached lastyear in July. Demand came within 2,000 MW of breaking that lastmonth on several occasions.)

Finally, Wood is going to see what California can do to regainsome unnamed powers he thinks it has unwisely given up to FERC aspart of the restructuring.

“[The current high electricity bills] are a logical consequenceof 15 years of ideologically driven regulatory policy at the CPUC,”said Wood as part of some prepared remarks. “Despite projectionsfrom the California Energy Commission for the need for futuregeneration capacity, the CPUC under the past two administrationshas done everything it could to prevent the construction of newutility-owned generating plants.”

Then, in 1995, he said the CPUC under former Gov. Pete Wilsonissued “a radical deregulation decision aimed at ceding allauthority over generation to market forces. These are the roots ofthe present crisis.”

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