California Utilities Approved To Buy More Power -- Re-Posting -- February 11, 2021

From SeekingAlpha:

• The California Public Utilities Commission votes to authorize Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and Sempra Energy's San Diego Gas & Electric to purchase extra power in the next three months and to pass on the costs to customers in order to avoid a repeat of last summer's rolling blackouts.
• Last August, more than 800K people were left without power during a heat wave after the California Independent System Operator ordered the state's first widespread rolling blackouts in nearly 20 years.
• The CPUC also votes to require utilities to provide 72 hours of backup power to landline phone and internet service during power outages.
• One in every five 911 calls is made using a landline telephone, and landlines are often concentrated in hard-to-reach rural areas.
• Utilities also must ensure that hospitals, fire and police departments and facilities that provide service to wireless networks in wildfire-prone areas have access to backup power by October.
• California's largest utilities said last week that they planned to spend ~ $13 billion to reduce the risk of wildfires.  

First question: from where will the utilities find this "extra power" to purchase? 

Second question: how expensive will this "extra power" be? Coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar?

Here's the answer, from the article, but one might have to connect a few dots:

Others who spoke during public comment session said they worried the rush to get more power capacity by the summer could lead the state to pay utilities to buy more fossil fuel energy when California is trying to move toward more clean energy sources.

"We really don’t envision long-term gas contracts resulting from this authorization, except perhaps in very narrow, unexpected circumstances," said Commissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen, addressing those concerns.

This whole story is so incredibly interesting on so many levels.