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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: 857
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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#1. To: Willie Green (#0)
The main and only purpose of the private enterprises is to squeeze as much money from the others as they can get away with.
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".
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.
The idea you can have a market in a utility is nonsense. How would I switch over to another electricity provider if I am upset at their service? How many power lines can I have come into my home and can I switch from one to another based on price/service? Clearly, not. Utilities can be for profit of course but on such things as life or death like electricity why not make them a not for profit enterprise? I recall the Democrats wanted to mess with Republicans and floated the idea of privatizing the TVA and you can go on Freerepublic and read the angry reactions against that from 'limited govt conservatives' because they know that will mean higher costs for energy for them. Here you go: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3025192/posts TVA is the kind of infrastructure agency that the government should be involved in. If its going to be sold sell it to the TVA states! For a dollar. 6 posted on 5/29/2013, 8:33:38 PM by ghannonf18
Not at all. Since the grids are interconnected in the case of failure of a given company's power supply, you can treat electricity as a fungible commodity. Sign up with your preferred provider and they pay the owner of the powerlines/transformers a common carriage fee for use of their infrastructure. We did much the same with the AT&T breakup, the big objection being that AT&T had bought and built all the infrastructure. You see the same thing with MVNO cellphone companies that use the towers of Verizon or AT&T to provide service to their customers. Certainly, it can be done. And it would not be especially challenging. It would also create a more efficient market for electricity. All of these are examples of common carriers who receive vast accommodations from government and the public. They are and should be obligated to provide common carriage, not just loot their customers.
Uhuh. Ever watch "The smartest guys in the room"? "One of the energy wholesalers that became notorious for "gaming the market" and reaping huge speculative profits was Enron Corporation . Enron CEO Kenneth Lay mocked the efforts by the California state government to thwart the practices of the energy wholesalers, saying, "In the final analysis, it doesn't matter what you crazy people in California do, because I got smart guys who can always figure out how to make money." The original statement was made in a phone conversation between S. David Freeman (Chairman of the California Power Authority) and Kenneth Lay in 2000, according to the statements made by Freeman to the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, Foreign Commerce and Tourism in April[26] and May 2002.[27]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis#Invo lvement_of_Enron
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?
#2. To: Willie Green (#0)
#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.
#4. To: Pericles (#3)
#5. To: TooConservative (#4)
#6. To: Pericles (#5)
The idea you can have a market in a utility is nonsense. How would I switch over to another electricity provider if I am upset at their service?
#7. To: TooConservative (#2)
Most ended up paying more for less electricity and rolling brownouts.
#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."
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