Also, California regulations certainly permit building new power plants (and many new plants have been built in the past decade), just not new coal fired plants.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
Or hydro-electric, or nuclear, or anything that would have meaningful impact on the state's situation.
More solar and wind are great, but they do not respond well to surges in demand, and there is no current way to store energy either.
So some impressive total production number might sound great, but the reality does not follow unfortunately. For a non-trivial portion of the state, electricity isn't a guarantee throughout the year anymore.
I eventually got so sick of it , that I left the state for good. I've never been happier.
Hence, my statement "they almost exclusively purchase power from other states at sub-optimal rates for any new power demand"