California has plenty of energy, it is just that the uneducated politicians (who do nothing, except pagentry) don't understand benevolence and spending money on things that help everytone.
Given the choice between producing solar, wind, or tidal power locally, and importing energy from neighboring states, the latter is a lot cheaper. So that's largely what California does.
"does California even have money? I thought they couldn't pay the wages of their own infrastructure."
They do have a lot of money, but it's a question of priorities. They've decided that welfare programs and retirement benefits for former government employees are very high priorities, and once they've spent all they want on those, there isn't so much money left for a lot of things that people from outside the state might expect to be higher priorities.
Basically - regulations then (and still today) make it very difficult to build a new power plant in California.
Deregulations on the energy grid (from the mid 1990's) made it easy for out-of-state companies to manipulate the power supply to California.
The wholesale electric market was deregulated, and utility companies had to buy from power brokers. But those same utility companies had their retail prices regulated: they could not raise their rates, and customers were not free to chose their utility provider to get the best rate. It was a huge boondoggle.
Out of State companies took advantage of the situation, created artificial blackouts (by manipulating power plants along the grid and the power distribution) so the state would be forced to import power from their out of state power plants at extremely high rates.
Enron was the biggest culprit, as a Texas power broker, and would intentionally shut down key power plants for "maintenance" so that it would create artificial in-state outages, and drive up the wholesale price. It forced many state utility companies to go bankrupt.
So today, because of past bankruptcies, and earlier inattention to the power grid, California has some of the highest electrical rates in the US.
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does California even have money? I thought they couldn't pay the wages of their own infrastructure.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
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I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
Given the choice between producing solar, wind, or tidal power locally, and importing energy from neighboring states, the latter is a lot cheaper. So that's largely what California does.
"does California even have money? I thought they couldn't pay the wages of their own infrastructure."
They do have a lot of money, but it's a question of priorities. They've decided that welfare programs and retirement benefits for former government employees are very high priorities, and once they've spent all they want on those, there isn't so much money left for a lot of things that people from outside the state might expect to be higher priorities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
The effects are still around today.
Basically - regulations then (and still today) make it very difficult to build a new power plant in California.
Deregulations on the energy grid (from the mid 1990's) made it easy for out-of-state companies to manipulate the power supply to California.
The wholesale electric market was deregulated, and utility companies had to buy from power brokers. But those same utility companies had their retail prices regulated: they could not raise their rates, and customers were not free to chose their utility provider to get the best rate. It was a huge boondoggle.
Out of State companies took advantage of the situation, created artificial blackouts (by manipulating power plants along the grid and the power distribution) so the state would be forced to import power from their out of state power plants at extremely high rates.
Enron was the biggest culprit, as a Texas power broker, and would intentionally shut down key power plants for "maintenance" so that it would create artificial in-state outages, and drive up the wholesale price. It forced many state utility companies to go bankrupt.
So today, because of past bankruptcies, and earlier inattention to the power grid, California has some of the highest electrical rates in the US.
http://texaselectricityratings.wordpress.com/a-comparison-of-deregulated-and-regulated-electricity-rates-2/