You make some interesting comments. The incompetence, liberalism, and economic ignorance of the Cal state legislature is one reason why I moved to Arizona. The high cost of housing and high taxes were the main reasons, along with an increasingly liberal and weird culture. Arizona is great; this state reminds me a lot of California in the 1970's when we had reasonable housing prices and reasonable people in the legislature.
You are right about their viewing profit as bad. So, when the ISO was established it was an artificial market in which the price for a given hour was determined by rules established by the ISO. I don't remembe exactly how they worked, but the problem was that the fair price had to be updated and communicated to ISO traders. On a few occasions, this communications was imperfect and they made deals lower than the rules called for. So, ever fearful of an actual free market, they went back to those providers and required them to raise prices.