Word: middlemen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...over California: there is more than enough electricity to go around. Like those in many other states that are taking a less radical approach to deregulation, such as Michigan and New Jersey, Pennsylvania's incumbent utilities were not required to sell the bulk of their power plants and become middlemen, vulnerable to the price spikes in the wholesale market. Even if they chose to purchase from other generators, they were allowed to lock in reasonable prices with long-term contracts instead of relying on the daily spot market. "As usual, California fired before they aimed," says Tom Hill, chief financial...
...California dismantled its private power-generating industry without securing adequate power supplies. The Big Three utilities, which in addition to PG&E and SCE include San Diego Gas & Electric, sold off plants to outsiders like Duke Energy of Charlotte, N.C., and Reliant Energy of Houston and became middlemen. But the state wouldn't allow these new intermediaries to enter long-term purchasing agreements for fear they would be locked into fixed-price contracts as prices dropped. Their purchases had to be made on the so-called spot--or cash--market, and prices were low at the time...
...areas in the country to have retail rates entirely deregulated, have soared as much as 30%. Although most of that increase is due to rising cost of the gas and oil that power generators in the Northeast, it has also cast a harsh light on independent power producers and middlemen who rule the wholesale market. To reduce any chance of foul play, the New York State public service commission is considering the implementation of a temporary, $150 per megawatt-hour wholesale price cap. Producers say the cap will discourage investment, but commission chairman Maureen Helmer dismisses that as an idle...
Electricity deregulation, of course, wasn't supposed to work this way. When the state's monopoly was broken up in 1998, Californians were told power would become more plentiful. Utilities would sell off their plants to private generators, like Dynegy and Duke Energy, and then act as middlemen, bidding on the open market for electricity and distributing it to their customers. But with the booming high-tech economy sucking up power, barely a week goes by without warnings of rolling blackouts or outages...
...Madeleine Albright tells TIME. But should the U.S. now step aside and let another broker try his hand at negotiating a peace, say U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan or the European Union? The Palestinians would like to internationalize future negotiations, believing they would get a better hearing from other middlemen, but Israel deeply distrusts the U.N. or European intermediaries. "We are the only country that can actually get something done," insists Albright. "It isn't we that are seeking the central role. They come...