“Power brokers (mainly Enron) were manipulating the newly de-regulated market for bulk electricity, forcing prices to skyrocket.”
In deregulated markets every generator gets paid the clearing price set by the last plant dispatched. A wind farm that bids $0 collects the same $30 per megawatt-hour as the coal plant. That design is how California’s 2000 crisis ran up around $40 billion in losses and pushed PG&E into bankruptcy. The grid was fine. The market was the failure.