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Title: California electric bill shock: Private firms charge way more than public utilities
Source:
LA Times
URL Source: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/ ... -utilities-20150614-story.html
Published: Jun 15, 2015
Author: Jeff McDonald
Post Date: 2015-06-15 08:16:08 by Willie Green
Keywords: None
Views: 845
Comments: 8
In Sacramento, a family using 500 kilowatt hours of electricity last October was charged $58. Customers in Los Angeles, also served by a public utility district, paid $79. Pacific Gas & Electric charged $93 for the same amount of power. Southern California Edison billed customers $97. And San Diego Gas & Electric topped the Southern California Public Power Authority survey at $116 for 500 kilowatt hours. The comparison of rates charged by public and private electricity providers in California shows a notable discrepancy in the amounts customers pay for power, depending on where they live and which provider serves them. Especially for heavy users, bills are higher at the investor-owned utilities SDG&E, Edison and PG&E, overseen by the California Public Utilities Commission. The commission is required to make sure the rates are just and reasonable at the private utilities, and doesn’t oversee the municipal districts. The utilities commission, which is the subject of separate state and federal investigations into possible favoritism and back-channel communications with utility executives, says costs are higher at private companies, in part, because they operate under different rules. “There are federal and state regulatory requirements that apply to investor-owned utilities that do not apply to publicly owned utilities,” said Terrie Prosper, a commission spokeswoman. “Publicly owned utilities have access to very-low-cost federal preference power from federally operated dams that the investor-owned utilities do not have access to, and many publicly owned utilities have access to low-cost financing that makes their capital investments much less expensive.” Municipal utilities say their rates are lower because there is no profit margin and their revenue is reinvested into the public service.
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#2. To: Willie Green (#0)
Much of this stems from the deregulation of the electricity industry in CA over ten years ago. Most ended up paying more for less electricity and rolling brownouts. Much as with current water shortages, CA suffers from fast population and energy use growth for which they failed to plan for adequately, often blocked from addressing energy and water needs by the litigious Green lobby of CA. The principle of deregulation shouldn't necessarily be measured solely by the California example. But California shows the pitfalls of lack of planning and lack of political will to make decisions in the public interest and act on them.
The principle of deregulation shouldn't necessarily be measured solely by the California example. But California shows the pitfalls of lack of planning and lack of political will to make decisions in the public interest and act on them. It was proven that Enron would take power plants off line "for maintenance" during peak periods causing shortages in power and thus a spike in prices. All while the brokers were laughing on the recording. Some things should not operate in the public sector at all and some things for the public should not be in private hands - such as utilities. The folly of the modern GOP's ideologues is their default position is to support for profit businesses over the govt when it should be more nuanced. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/enron-traders-caught-on-tape/ When a forest fire shut down a major transmission line into California, cutting power supplies and raising prices, Enron energy traders celebrated, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports. "Burn, baby, burn. That's a beautiful thing," a trader sang about the massive fire. Four years after California's disastrous experiment with energy deregulation, Enron energy traders can be heard – on audiotapes obtained by CBS News – gloating and praising each other as they helped bring on, and cash-in on, the Western power crisis. "He just f---s California," says one Enron employee. "He steals money from California to the tune of about a million." "Will you rephrase that?" asks a second employee. "OK, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day," replies the first. The tapes, from Enron's West Coast trading desk, also confirm what CBS reported years ago: that in secret deals with power producers, traders deliberately drove up prices by ordering power plants shut down. "If you took down the steamer, how long would it take to get it back up?" an Enron worker is heard saying. "Oh, it's not something you want to just be turning on and off every hour. Let's put it that way," another says. "Well, why don't you just go ahead and shut her down." Officials with the Snohomish Public Utility District near Seattle received the tapes from the Justice Department. -------------------------------------------- As far as I know, California energy customers have yet to be compensated for the theft that happened via artificially inflated pricing of electricity via the "free market".
#4. To: Pericles (#3)
Merely because private utilities did behave corruptly does not mean it is inherent to the system. Quite obviously, this represented unfair competition against regulated utilities who couldn't get away with such greed and should have been the basis for crushing class action lawsuits against these private companies and the individuals who conspired to defraud them. But let's keep in mind who has run California top to bottom for the last 30 years: Democrats.
Anybody with eyes in their head could see what was going on. It's not hard to see somebody is gaming the system when power plants (like the one I used to ride past on PCF) aren't operating during the "shortage". Wonder how many of the ENRON folks were relieved when 9-11 diverted attention from their antics?
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#3. To: TooConservative, Willie Green, A Pole (#2)
(Edited)
Much of this stems from the deregulation of the electricity industry in CA over ten years ago. Most ended up paying more for less electricity and rolling brownouts. Much as with current water shortages, CA suffers from fast population and energy use growth for which they failed to plan for adequately, often blocked from addressing energy and water needs by the litigious Green lobby of CA.
Replies to Comment # 3.
#8. To: Pericles (#3)
"it was proven that Enron would take power plants off line "for maintenance" during peak periods causing shortages in power and thus a spike in prices. All while the brokers were laughing on the recording."
End Trace Mode for Comment # 3.
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