I remain skeptical of the "deregulation" panacea, not only because of the fincancial gymnastics by which Enron screwed their own stockholders, but also because the focus is merely on financial deregulation, not of the other burderns that are placed on various forms of power generation.
IMHO, even those companies that are innocent of Enron type misbehavior are still short-sighted in their investments. Natural gas is the "easiest" route to take because it is so clean-burning. But what happens in aggregate if, as a nation, we put all our eggs into the natural gas basket? (including automobile companies looking to replace gasoline engines with natural gas powere fuel cells?)
Additionally, many of the natural gas plants being built are smaller "peaker" units. While these may be financially "efficient" (minimal investment, maximum revenue charged at "peak" rates), they are still not as "efficient" as the very large "base-load" power plants which require a much larger investment initially.
Prior to the deregulation phenomena, the "public utility" model served our nation well for many, many decades. To date, deregulation has yet to prove itself. Yes we need more power plants, both to replace antiquated plants in addition to satisfying new demand created by growth. But what we need to emphasize are the large base-load plants: nuclear and clean-coal technologies. Not over-reliance on a slew of little natural-gas peaker units misapplied to base-load demand.