Electric power is either instantaneously available from the generating source, or it is not.
It is not an item that can be "exported", then re-imported for profit.
I certainly don't have much respect for the Kalifornia legislators who crafted this screwy "deregulation",
but I don't see any value in having "traders" either.
They don't actually build power plants, generate or transmit electricity.
They're merely middlemen who add cost to the power bill.
Not true for several reasons. In the first place, it's not available instantanteously. When you turn on a light in your home, some spinning generator somewhere bogs down just a teeny bit. Sensing this, it's control system orders a fuel valve to open just enough to provide you the extra 100 Watts.
This takes a finite amount of time, from a few seconds in the case of a gas-turbine, so several hours in the case of a nuclear plant.
In the second place, to keep the grid stable, there must be spinning reserves on line to pick up the slack in case of a sudden increase of load. These generators aren't pumping any power at all into the grid, but are being paid for being there if needed, just like...say...EMS Techs at the fire station.
In the third place, electricity is fungible. There is no way to tell which electron in your microwave was produced in which power plant. Generators all pump power into the grid (usually), and consumers take it out. The generators read their electric meters to know how much power they put in, and consumers read their meters to know how much they took out, but nobody knows where those pesky electrons happend to travel along the way. Think of it as a big lake with water coming in and going out at the same time.
So on paper, it's possible for a generator in California who finds itself producing an excess of power, to sell that excess power to New Mexico, and then someone in New Mexico to sell the same power back to California a few minutes later.
I don't see any value in having "traders" either. They don't actually build power plants, generate or transmit electricity. They're merely middlemen who add cost to the power bill.
Then of course you buy all your food products directly from the farmer, and fill up your tank at the refinery, right?
I have dealings with a power plant that is a so-called "peaker". It generally runs twice a day, for a few hours in the morning, and then again in the evening, this according to the contract they have with the local power company. The rest of the time, it is down. During the Enron days, they would continue running during their off-hours, selling power through Enron to whomever.
Now that Enron is out of the picture, they no longer have the same contacts to sell their spare capacity, and are back to running about half the time. They expect to rectify that soon.
Brokers play a very important role in connecting companies that have spare capacity, with companies that need that spare power.
Power plants produce power under contract. When they must go down to do maintenance, they often must themselves purchase replacement power. This they do through brokers, who purchase the spare capacity from other plants. Replacement power usually goes at a very high price, but since it is usually only for a few hours, or days at worst, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
California, in her incompetence, has discouraged power plant construction over the past, what, twenty years? Not surprisingly, she is in a bind, and has been forced to buy major amounts of power at "replacement power" prices. Obviously Californians don't want to admit that they are fools, nor are their elected officials and beaurocrats willing to own up to their culpability; much easier to blame the brokers who went out and found them the power they needed to keep the lights on.
Politically, things still have not changed much; it is still a nightmare to get a power plant permitted in California, and I frankly don't know why anyone would want to try.