OS ANGELES, March 28 Concurring with what many politicians and energy experts had already concluded, the California state controller issued an analysis today showing that the nearly 50 percent increase in energy prices agreed to on Tuesday would still not cover the prices the state must pay for electricity on the wholesale market.

The analysis by the controller, Kathleen Connell, added weight to a chorus of warnings around the state that even the extra $5 billion or so a year that the increases will provide would leave many of the worst problems in the crisis unresolved, could imperil the state budget and left further increases seeming a near certainty.

While some experts said the record increase was a needed dose of reality for rate payers, others said it would do little to end the state's power crisis, and the blackouts and soaring debt that had come with it.

"Yesterday's action by the Public Utilities Commission was not sufficient in solving California's financial problems caused by the energy crisis," Ms. Connell said. She said "another cash-flow crisis is looming."

Ms. Connell, who is in a tough political race for mayor of Los Angeles, also made it clear that another rate increase appeared essential, and that even this analysis was based on optimistic assumptions.

"Without identifying some other means of financing, California will face cash-flow problems by the first of October," she said. "The kind of pressures we're feeling in the state are unprecedented. I'm concerned about the state's ability to meet other obligations."

Even some experts who hinted that Ms. Connell's comments might have been overly dramatic to draw attention to her during the campaign agreed that the state still faced some tough choices.

Various political leaders and energy experts said that the higher rates might not increase supplies of electricity enough to avoid blackouts in the summer, when demand rises sharply; might not encourage more than a modest reduction in use; and might still leave state government hemorrhaging money as it spends roughly $45 million a day buying power.

The higher rates also leaves unresolved the problem of how the state's two largest utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison, will pay off more than $10 billion in debt accumulated from buying electricity at soaring wholesale rates, then selling it to customers at lower, government-regulated prices.

"A rate increase does not guarantee that there will not be utility bankruptcies," said Senator Debra Bowen, chairwoman of the State Senate's energy committee. "It does not guarantee there won't be more rate increases."

Other experts said the gap between wholesale power prices and those the state has permitted at the retail level was still too big.

"I haven't seen all the details, but this is still not all that promising," said Severin Borenstein, director of the California Energy Institute at the University of California at Berkeley. "In a sense, it's not that much of a price increase because it still does not reflect the real price of the product."

Tuesday's decision by the Public Utilities Commission provided just a general goal and left many details to be worked out. The commission said it intended in principle to introduce a tiered pricing strategy, which many energy experts have urged for months.