San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has filed comments to support the "majority proposal" by the California Public Utilities Commission on deregulating the electric utility industry, which calls for formation of a wholesale power pool.
SDG&E noted that while a key element of the proposal involved creating an independent system operator, the company would go further and set up a regional transmission company to own the grid. Moreover, SDG&E advocated several steps to eliminate the influence of any participants who might possess or later acquire market power:
s Performance-based rates (PBR)
s Contracts for differences for certain plants
s Monitoring rules (with sanctions)
s Transmission upgrades
s Divestiture of generating stations or individual units.
SDG&E opposes a forced sale of hundreds of power plants in California. Instead, it prefers a default PBR mechanism to get the proposed Western Power Exchange operating by 1997. SDG&E endorsed PUC's "cooperative federalism" idea as "workable," and predicts that California restructuring can be implemented without any changes in state or federal law.
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