June 20, 2002
In response to a request by an inquiry by California State Senator Joseph Dunn, Perot Systems Corp. made public today more than 10,000 pages of information on its business dealings with California energy companies. Included in the documents are internal statements made by Perot employees about conversations with Edison executives. In response, SCE President Robert G. Foster issued the following statement.
ROSEMEAD, Calif., June 20, 2002 -While Perot representatives in 1997 approached SCE about market design issues, there was no value to us or our customers, and we did not hire them.
That's because, our interests in the California electricity market have always been in alignment with the interests of our customers: to ensure a stable, low-price electricity market, keeping prices lower-not higher. We have never had any incentive to boost prices.
We were operating under a rate freeze. We were required to and could only buy all of the power necessary to serve customers out of the state-created market. We could not engage in trading. And when the market became totally dysfunctional, it was the high, volatile wholesale power costs that pushed SCE to the brink of bankruptcy last year.
Even as the electricity market was being restructured and designed in 1997, we spent enormous effort evaluating proposed rules to prevent abuses in the marketplace and protect our customers.
SCE was the first to alert federal and state regulators as market abuses became evident, and vigorously pushed for lower Cal-ISO price caps on wholesale prices.
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An Edison International company, Southern California Edison is one of the nation's largest electric utilities, serving a population of more than 11 million via 4.3 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within central, coastal and Southern California. For more information on the California electricity market, see www.sce.com.