Nothing to do with green energy, everything to do with sleazy sales promotions by unregulated utilities. It’s easier to proactively rein in unfair business practices than to retroactively fix them.
California’s experience in 2001-2002 illustrated the folly of allowing variable rate contracts.
Many of the sleazy sales promotions usually do something like this:
Rates per KWHRS use month:
500: 11 cents
1000: 10 cents
2000: 9 cents
Average person looks at that and thinks, "Ok, I average 2000 or more and 9 cents is reasonable. All those July and August AC kw's will get the lowest rate." But the fine print states the 2000 rate is from 1001 to 2000 and once you go over 2000 you get billed for a much, much higher rate. Real sneaky and sleazy.
I am adamantly opposed to laws against “price gouging” because variable prices have an important role in adjusting demand during changing market conditions. But an important aspect of this is that works only in cases where the consumer knows the price BEFORE making a transaction. If the price of a hotel room goes from $100 to $500 during a period of high demand after a disaster, I can always refuse to pay by finding alternative arrangements for spending the night somewhere. It would be ludicrous for the hotel to raise the rate and charge me the $500 after I had already spent the night there.
Sounds a bit strange...at least in California the “end user/homeowner” is on a CPUC regulated rate schedule and the “price per KWH” would not change w/o months and months of CPUC rate hearings. Even during the AB-1890/Enron/PG&E bankruptcy/Grey-out Davis” era prices changed very little for the end user. Don’t Texas utilities “hedge” and buy power thru “futures contracts”?