Uh, PG&E does buy power at the market. They are simply
not allowed to sell power at the market price, which is
the root cause of the problem.
Deregulation tends to work when both sides are fully
deregulated (buying and selling). Crimping the
creation of new power plants and being forced to sell
essentially unlimited amounts of power at a nearly
fixed price caused this mess. Blame the environmentalists
and politicians, not PG&E.
Prabhu