CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: California's precarious power situation is being blamed in part on deregulation, and yet in the state of Pennsylvania, deregulation seems to be working just fine. People in California may ask why. So we asked CNN's Brooks Jackson, who is in Norristown, Pennsylvania, this morning. How'd they do it, Brooks?</s>BROOKS JACKSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, it's fascinating. We're here at the PJM Interconnection. This is the nerve center for a whole regional market that includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and others. It's also the largest wholesale competitive market for electricity in the world. We're a few steps away from the control room floor. There is no crisis here. There's no panic. There's plenty of generating capacity. There are no rolling blackouts. Utilities here are making money -- some of them making record profits. Back here in the media center, a few steps away, we can see that demand is peaking this morning, a little bit higher than projected. Prices are up a little. They've been fluctuating all morning, like stock prices. These prices, by the way, are so volatile they'd make a dot-com daytrader have a heart attack if they saw how some of these prices peaked, and yet it's working out here. Let's look at some of the details of how consumers are making out, for example. Rates here are capped at 1996 levels. That means no consumer can pay more -- can pay higher rates than they were paying in 1996; many can pay less. State officials estimate there's been $2.8 billion total in the rate reductions for consumers in Pennsylvania. And they can pay less because half a million have switched to competitive suppliers. Consumers have choices in Philadelphia, for example: Nine companies are competing for the business of consumers there, many of them undercutting the traditional utility. So here in Pennsylvania, deregulation is working out just peachy.</s>LIN: And that is good news. Thank you so much, Brooks Jackson -- a lesson that perhaps California can take in the long run.
Power Deregulation in Pennsylvania Working Well