Protecting the Market from ‘‘Hockey Stick’’ Pricing: How the Public Utility Commission of Texas is Dealing with Potential Price Gouging

David Hurlbut, Keith Rogas, and Shmuel Oren David Hurlbut is Senior Economist at the Market Oversight Division of the Public Utility Commission of Texas in Austin. His duties involve monitoring activity in Texas’ deregulated wholesale power market, investigating anticompetitive practices and market abuses, and reviewing rules governing the wholesale power market. He holds a doctorate from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. Keith Rogas is an attorney and is the Director of the PUCT Legal and Enforcement Division’s Electric Section. He has 14 years of experience in electric industry regulation with the PUCT, and has spent much of the last four years on electric wholesale market design and monitoring. Mr. Rogas received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Shmuel Oren is Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at the University of California at Berkeley as well as Senior Adviser to PUCT’s Market Oversight Division. Over the past seven years he has served as the Berkeley site director of Pserc, the multi-university Power Systems Research Center sponsored by the National Science Foundation and industry members. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Julie Gauldin and the rest of the Market Oversight Division staff during the development of the Competitive Solution Method.