Read the full report but this excerpt shows how regulators act. If there are going to incentives there should be strings attached and not to our checkbooks.
RechargeTexas.com report – Warning: New Proposals Designed to Increase Prices, Company Profits
…So this brings us to question No. 2, which is really all about how we should go about fixing the problem, such as it is. The solution offered by some in Austin is to implement new rules — rules that by their very design will increase prices. I’ll say it again. There’s an important policy debate going on about how we can make electricity more expensive. Generation companies say that want more profits so they’ll have the economic incentive to build more power plants. But they also offer no guarantees. All we have is the hope that by throwing money at generation companies, that they somehow will make our reliability challenges go away.
What are some of the most troubling proposals? Under one, regulators would raise or eliminate existing price offer caps for wholesale energy. Like other states, Texas currently enforces these caps to protect the public against Enron-style price gouging, and to ensure the wholesale power market does not go haywire. These caps do not exist to stifle competition, but rather to ensure that prices do not shoot beyond what we would expect to find in a healthy market. If Texas adopts higher price offer caps, it won’t be long before the wholesale market hits them. This will lead to higher electricity prices at home. The situation could be much worse for consumers if there’s no cap at all. …