CPUC finds no fault in Friedman

The California Public Utilities Commission is implementing guidelines to advance Governor Schwarzenegger's electric restructuring plan:

The plan approved by the Public Utilities Commission creates a bidding procedure for deciding who gets to build power plants in California. Before, power plant construction was largely the job of the investor-owned utilities, such as Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

Now utilities will submit new proposals to a kind of auction system in which the merchant generators can compete for the right to build the plants themselves and then sell the power under contract to the utilities. The auction will be refereed by an outside party known as an independent evaluator.

The PUC decision was applauded by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who vetoed a bill in September that would have created a more regulatory-based system and given traditional utilities more leeway to build their own plants.