GlobeSt.com began reporting in July that many Southland officebuildings and other businesses were suffering power outages, astemperatures soared and electricity to many buildings was shutdown. The power shortage knocked out thousands of computers,hundreds of elevators and even the cash registers at manyconvenience stores.

The new study, though funded by SCE, was led by the director ofthe highly regarded MIT Center for Energy and Environmental PolicyResearch. It finds that plant owners and electricity resellers wereable to boost their profits dramatically at the start of the summerby cutting back operations at some plants, creating artificialshortages that allowed them to charge higher prices in California'srecently deregulated energy market.

The report itself doesn't estimate how much commercial landlordsand homeowners lost. But separately, the state's Public UtilitiesCommission says its own analysis indicates that users wereovercharged more than $4 billion.