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This reminds me of the 1999 to 2001 energy crisis in California. Instead of building more capacity, the politicians were urging everyone to "conserve". That's a fine objective, but there is a problem. The net savings in energy from 10 "gung ho" households is negated by the arrival of a single new consumer. You can't conserve your way out of the energy crisis. The daily flood of illegals will more than compensate for all the savings.

On a practical note, I work very aggressively to cut power consumption on my railcars. They consume about 21 watts from a 12 volt battery. The battery is recharged by a bearing generator that produces 24 watts at 50 MPH. I have to do some serious paring down of power drains. That is going to take lots of analysis and probably some hardware and software modification. My payback is a more robust system that doesn't continually wipe out batteries. It is a small scale effort. It's going to cost some money, but I don't have a competitor in the marketplace.

Mandating lower power consumption is going to cause some pencil sharpening in the engineering and marketing departments. If dropping the California marketplace is causes less impact to the company bottom line than re-engineering the product for the whole marketplace...at a higher price point, then California won't be getting product. Business is in business to make money. They will find the optimal solution.

Mandating lower power consumption is going to cause some pencil sharpening in the engineering and marketing departments.

Attention, citizen! You are in violation of Section 304 of the Mandatory Conservation Act of 2006! Surrender your electric pencil-sharpener at the nearest CalPower Reclamation Center!

;)