More Renewable Wriggling: Don't say the 'C' word

Utilities were precluded from entering into longer-term agreements that would have allowed them to hedge their energy purchases and mitigate day-to-day swings in prices due to transient supply disruptions and demand spikes from hot weather.[citation needed]
PG&E yard in San Francisco
Then, in 2000, wholesale prices were deregulated, but retail prices were regulated for the incumbents as part of a deal with the regulator, allowing the incumbent utilities to recover the cost of assets that would be stranded as a result of greater competition, based on the expectation that “frozen” rates would remain higher than wholesale prices. This assumption remained true from April 1998 through May 2000.[citation needed]
Energy deregulation put the three companies that distribute electricity into a tough situation. Energy deregulation policy froze or capped the existing price of energy that the three energy distributors could charge.[13] Deregulating the producers of energy did not lower the cost of energy. Deregulation did not encourage new producers to create more power and drive down prices. Instead, with increasing demand for electricity, the producers of energy charged more for electricity.[14] The producers used moments of spike energy production to inflate the price of energy.[14] In January 2001, energy producers began shutting down plants to increase prices.[14]
When electricity wholesale prices exceeded retail prices, end user demand was unaffected, but the incumbent utility companies still had to purchase power, albeit at a loss. This allowed independent producers to manipulate prices in the electricity market by withholding electricity generation, arbitraging the price between internal generation and imported (interstate) power, and causing artificial transmission constraints. This was a procedure referred to as “gaming the market.” In economic terms, the incumbents who were still subject to retail price caps were faced with inelastic demand (see also: Demand response).

The above describes the Energy Crisis of 2000 and 2001. Blame Enron all you want, but the real cause was the regulation. Anyone with a 2nd grade level of economics could have predicted what happened. The Guys at Enron simply followed the rules written by the regulators. The nit-wits deregulated only 1/2 of the market. Any fool should have understood what was going to be the result. The problem is that the liberals don’t even bother to try to understand how Free Markets work, and why should they, when things go wrong they just blame that darn FREE market.

The Capitol Power Plant is a fossil-fuel burning power plant which provides steam and chilled water for the United States Capitol, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress and 19 other buildings in the Capitol Complex. Located at 25 E St SE in southeast Washington, D.C., it is the only coal-burning power plant in the District of Columbia, though it mostly uses natural gas.[1][2] The plant has been serving the Capitol since 1910, and is under the administration of the Architect of the Capitol (see 2 U.S.C. § 2162). Though it was originally built to supply the Capitol complex with electricity as well, the plant has not produced electricity for the Capitol since 1952.[1] Electricity generation is now handled by the same power grid and local electrical utility (Pepco) that serves the rest of metropolitan Washington.[3]
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the facility released 118,851 tons of carbon dioxide in 2007.[4] In 2009 it switched to using natural gas, unless coal was needed for backup capacity. In 2013, it was announced that the Capitol Power Plant would add a Cogeneration Plant to the CPP that will use natural gas in a combustion turbine in order to efficiently generate both electricity and heat for steam, thus further reducing emissions.[2]

This is how the US Capital gets its power. Coal and Natural Gas is good enough for them, but not the rest of us.

The graphic should show Australian currency, not US.