[stephen_g]

When you turn energy generation into a market, it opens up the possibility for huge amounts of money to be made by big players constraining supply at just the right times. Of course if properly competitive markets existed outside econ textbook models, it would solve itself, but unfortunately the barrier to entry is too high in the real world so competition is always limited to a few players who try to get as large as possible (gobbling up any smaller ones in the process).

This kind of profiteering by intentionally constraining supply when there was very high demand was literally something Enron became infamous for, but it still happens all around the world.

Of course, on the transmission and distribution side you can’t even try to have a market and there is always a natural monopoly, it’d just be impossible for anyone to overbuild a new grid in any service area. So turning a state-owned natural monopoly into a private one tends to turn out just as badly as anyone could expect…