Electric Utility Deregulation

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by donegeal
So then what is next? Deregulated water? The basic needs of the people should be regulated to prevent corporations from having power over the people.

hehe, they have actually deregulated water is some parts of the world. The consequences were even worse.

[Sava]

Regulation = accountability for corporations

It's funny how most abuses of the system comes from areas that have been "de-regulated".

[Starchild]

In my happy deregulated power market, I have the choice of going with a provider who only generates electricity using by using renewable resources such as wind, solar, or tidal. I can sleep soundly knowing that I'm not adding a single molecule of carbon dioxide to the air. If they change their policies, I can switch providers to one that meets my ethical requirements.

How many of you guys with government power utilities can say that?

[Sava]

I live in a country where the cheap nature of fossil fuel power makes it the most dominant form of energy. I don't really want a choice. I think there should be one power company, either regulated heavily by the government, or controlled by the government that provides clean, cheap energy. But instead we have a multitude of greedy companies that would burn people alive if it produced cheaper energy.

[Starchild]

Odd, I don't see anyone being burnt for power over here. I may have to look a bit hard the next time I pass by the wind farm.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Starchild
In my happy deregulated power market, I have the choice of going with a provider who only generates electricity using by using renewable resources such as wind, solar, or tidal. I can sleep soundly knowing that I'm not adding a single molecule of carbon dioxide to the air. If they change their policies, I can switch providers to one that meets my ethical requirements.

How many of you guys with government power utilities can say that?

I think the biggest problem is that even though consumers have a choice there are producers that end up with market power because of their large market share. That's where the inefficiencies and higher prices come in.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Starchild
Odd, I don't see anyone being burnt for power over here. I may have to look a bit hard the next time I pass by the wind farm.

De-regulation can work if the corporate culture is one of integrity, honesty, and fairness. Unfortunately, none of these values are present in corporate America.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Starchild, honey, not many people have the luxury of freezing their balls off half the year in a low population density wasteland where there's lots of water going downhill, big tides, and constant winds from the north-friggin' pole. Canada has a unique situation with respect to electrical power demands and generation options. It is not comparable physically or economically to anywhere else in the world.

Plato - I worked in the midst of the Cali restructuring Scheißsturm throughout most of the 90's, doing consulting work related to strategic planning for public agencies, powerplant siting, land-use and environmental requirements for independent power producers, and a whole bunch of rate, feasibility and operations analysis. I'll post more about this later, but the "Enron collapse" had nothing to do with Cali, except perhaps their approach to the Cali market was symptomatic of their basic stupidity outside their core gas pipeline business.

More later.

[St Leo]

In America it caused problems perhaps, but in other countries (such as Australia or Canada) it has done nothing but reduce prices for the public while increasing choice.

LOL. It's not working out at all in Canada. When one corporation raises the rate, all others will raise the rate too in order to make more money because they know that competition is bad for them and they don't want to undercut the other at all because that would be bad for their margins.

OTOH, when the government raises the rates, it gets voted out in the next election. Utilities should be government owned.

[Odin]

This is bad, we all know what happened to gas prices when Oil Companies were deregulated, they shot up.

[Odin]

Shoot, St. Leo beat me to the point.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Odin
This is bad, we all know what happened to gas prices when Oil Companies were deregulated, they shot up.

Are you referring to natural gas, or gasoline? And when were oil companies regulated in the US?

Edit - BTW, if you're referring to natural gas prices, interstate natural gas went through the dereg process in the mid-80's, and transitional issues were pretty much cleaned up by the early -90's. "Retail" natural gas, i.e. local distribution companies, are still primarily regulated, with some non-core customer classes for those customers large enough to (theoretically) participate in the deregulated interstate market.

In the core customer classes nationwide, the gas price component of the rates has gone down, although there have been increases in non-gas price components (inflation in maintenance and personnel costs, etc.)

In the deregulated marketplace, natural gas prices have been at least 20% less than the previous regulated prices in more than 90% of the trading months since deregulation, and they've been at least 50% less for over a third of the trading months since deregulation. There have been two pricing crises in ten to fifteen years of deregulation - a speculative bubble due to the Iraq war and situation in Venezuela (oil prices have a loosely linked effect on gas prices) and the winter of 2001 demand spike. Despite those two, if you average out the prices on a yearly basis, natural gas prices on the wholesale market have been less every year of deregulation than they were under the previous regulatory scheme.

[Az]

In my happy deregulated power market, I have the choice of going with a provider who only generates electricity using by using renewable resources such as wind, solar, or tidal. I can sleep soundly knowing that I'm not adding a single molecule of carbon dioxide to the air. If they change their policies, I can switch providers to one that meets my ethical requirements.

How many of you guys with government power utilities can say that?

I can't say that. I don't even want to say that. I own a car damnit.

[Agathon]

Well it doesn't work. It was tried in New Zealand and the most spectacular failure was that the core of our biggest city went without power for six weeks.

Other than that, prices went up.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Agathon
Well it doesn't work. It was tried in New Zealand and the most spectacular failure was that the core of our biggest city went without power for six weeks.

Other than that, prices went up.

Wow! I didn't here about that one.