What this clause said was simply that the utilities would need to buy, and move to market, electricity produced by any facility with an output of less than 80 MW (about a tenth of what might have been produced by an average nuclear power plant at the time). And, just as important, they would be obliged to pay a nonmiserly rate for it. This rate would be set according to what were called “avoided costs”—that is, the money it would have cost the utility to make that precise amount of electricity for themselves.
