

A Really Terrible Option
In a deregulated electricity market – the RTO model – the RTOs serve as the middlemen that connect power generators with power customers. They make money for their Wall Street owners by paying power generators as little as possible to make electricity, while charging retail power customers as much as possible for that electricity. In states like Texas, RTOs can charge customers as much as they want for power. They also have no requirement to help maintain the power grid and make sure power is available during extreme weather events and natural disasters.
In the traditional regulated public utility model, one company is responsible for generating and supplying power to customers and a public utilities advocate or commission regulates that utility and sets a specific amount of money the public utility can make off of selling electricity.
RTO supporters promise RTOs will create an electricity marketplace that lowers residential customers’ power bills without reducing the quality of service. A quick review of the two largest power markets that rely on RTOs – California and Texas – tells a much different and much uglier story: