Power outage problem, de-regulation, related issues... MY THOUGHTS!

[HershOstropoler]

MtG:

"Self-regulation isn't a good description. The major generators have board seats on the RRC's, but the RRC's are mostly tech weenies (IT, control systems, generation equipment, some dispatch center geeks) who've never been involved in the moneygrubbing side of the industry."

Why don't the little kings get rid of the pesky priests they nominate?

"The reliability goal is the same, but the turbulent priests are technoweenies, so they consider the difference between a system with lots of big coal fired units, and one with a mix of hydro, gas peakers and oil burners, and they adapt the reserve requirements for the respective systems."

Aha, so it's the same as here.

"whereas I'm a general utility (water, electricity and gas) operations geek."

Isyour work more on the regulatory or the economics/tech side?

[HershOstropoler]

Spiffor:

In dealing with our former monopoly, I have to say they improved a lot on things like installation time. I also had no problem with surprise costs showing up somewhere, or contract issues. "Despite having signed contracts for 2 renewable months, they ended up with 24-months contracts." - Well unless they signed something else, that's not possible.

"BTW, DT only gives a 10 days delay to wire the money after the bill has been printed, before charging a Mahnung."

They want automatic booking from your account. Our telco charges extra for sending bills. Makes sense, as it's cheaper for them, and more convenient for you.

"Besides, incompetent staff plagues DT, to the point a competent worker is a rare sight."

Well they didn't fire all competent workers since dereg. From what I see at the post office where dereg is slower, the worst ones are usually remains from the happy days where they were an authority, not a business.

"Since cretin politicians demand DT to make money, they have no choice but to hire incompetent staff and to snatch money wherever they can."

Why should the tax payer make up their losses? Btw I don't think the network business is losing money.

[Geronimo]

MTG, from statements such as Bush's insistence that the powergrid be "modernized", it looks like there will be a lot of political pressure to "do something", probably federally, in the wake of the blackout to 'fix' the powergrid. Do you think such a sentiment could backfire and produce counter-productive policies?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by HershOstropoler
MtG:

"Self-regulation isn't a good description. The major generators have board seats on the RRC's, but the RRC's are mostly tech weenies (IT, control systems, generation equipment, some dispatch center geeks) who've never been involved in the moneygrubbing side of the industry."

Why don't the little kings get rid of the pesky priests they nominate?

They don't get to nominate any, except at the executive level. The biggest problem they have as far as doing anything with the turbulent priests is that each of the little kings has some aligned interests and some potentially opposing interests with each other little king. The "greed is good" investor owned utility set has to coexist with the consumer group representatives, the Federal power bureaucracies, and a bunch of uppity raubritters, in the form of all the muni utilities that crop up within little king realms. California is 30% municipal utility by population, and they all have different interests. Although the turbulent priests can be a nuisance to everyone, they also protect everyone's system integrity from everyone else's, so their collective benefit to those they annoy outweighs the annoyment for any little king.

"whereas I'm a general utility (water, electricity and gas) operations geek."

Isyour work more on the regulatory or the economics/tech side?

It's always been on the econ/tech side, but in gas, I sort of straddled the fence, in that most of what I was doing was analyzing the econ impacts of the different FERC orders implementing deregulation.

Now, I'm transitioning out of consultancy work, to where I'll be virtually fulltime in my software company within 60 days (I started a software company to do automated operations and system performance analysis, and to create virtual operations centers on a scale that works for small independent generators)

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Geronimo
MTG, from statements such as Bush's insistence that the powergrid be "modernized", it looks like there will be a lot of political pressure to "do something", probably federally, in the wake of the blackout to 'fix' the powergrid. Do you think such a sentiment could backfire and produce counter-productive policies?

I think Bush is speaking more from the campaigner mode of saying what people want to hear, than anything else.

Even if you had all the money and the mandate, full scale modernizing and fixing the eastern US transmission grid is a multi-decade issue. There isn't enough manufacturing capacity for the wire, and there aren't enough trained electricians with D/T voltage and high tower experience, nor is there enough of the specialty construction equipment, relay manufacturing capacity, or transformer manufacturing capacity.

The cleanup from Hurricane Andrew, which was a much less extensive problem (albeit on a tighter schedule), took a huger portion of the skilled D/T voltage contractor base, and people who had orders for utility grade wire were bumped for months, as the wire spool production capacity was diverted to making emergency replacement.

It would be nice if there was some subsidy with a mandate to upgrade transmission systems, and long term, you'd create a better deregulated generation market by improving import/export capacity to all the major load centers, but even getting that implemented through the FERC will take years, and implrementation will take years more.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some token action that sounds good in time for campaign season - after all, that's what the power of the incumbency is all about, but there's nothing that can be done that won't require a vision that goes well beyond even a two term Bush presidency.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by HershOstropoler
"Despite having signed contracts for 2 renewable months, they ended up with 24-months contracts." - Well unless they signed something else, that's not possible.

Typical faith of the lawyer I guess We students rarely have resources to send some lawyer everytime some company tries to screw us. This is very possible, and this has happened.
In Germany, there is no need to 'sign' papers anymore: your oral agreement is enough, as long as the company can prove it was you who gave the oral agreement (DT asks for your IDcard, and then does business with you without any paper to sign). I suppose that's what happened for mt gf in the O2 shop, when the incompetent salesman filled the wrong form on his computer.

They want automatic booking from your account. Our telco charges extra for sending bills. Makes sense, as it's cheaper for them, and more convenient for you.

I'd have gladly done so three years ago, when DT was a respectable company. Today, there is no way that I don't control the money they want from me. There are much less problems for me when the money is on my side when there's a litigation.

Well they didn't fire all competent workers since dereg. From what I see at the post office where dereg is slower, the worst ones are usually remains from the happy days where they were an authority, not a business.

Most of the personnel I've seen dealing with the clients are either sharky salesmen or unexperienced interns. I suppose these are their priority when they hire new personnel. I must admit the staff behind the phone (the Zentrale) seems surprisingly able to clean the mess though.

Why should the tax payer make up their losses? Btw I don't think the network business is losing money.

Because what they provide (cheap local calls demanded by the political fields, network for calling companies to use, etc.) is an externality for the society as a whole, and because they are required to do these anti-rentability activities.

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Typical faith of the lawyer I guess We students rarely have resources to send some lawyer everytime some company tries to screw us. This is very possible, and this has happened.
In Germany, there is no need to 'sign' papers anymore: your oral agreement is enough, as long as the company can prove it was you who gave the oral agreement (DT asks for your IDcard, and then does business with you without any paper to sign). I suppose that's what happened for mt gf in the O2 shop, when the incompetent salesman filled the wrong form on his computer.

They want automatic booking from your account. Our telco charges extra for sending bills. Makes sense, as it's cheaper for them, and more convenient for you.

I'd have gladly done so three years ago, when DT was a respectable company. Today, there is no way that I don't control the money they want from me. There are much less problems for me when the money is on my side when there's a litigation.

in america its pretty easy to win in small claims court if u have any sort of case. judges will often just give the benefit of the doubt. mind u u wont get 60 million in settlement tho.

[yavoon]

it sed it didnt post! such lies.

[The Andy-Man]

does the problem come about because the general public have neithewr the intelligence or the inclination to actually 'choose' who supplies their power? They will just have who ever they have got, and not care?

[HershOstropoler]

Spiffor:

"In Germany, there is no need to 'sign' papers anymore: your oral agreement is enough"

Anymore? That goes back to roman law.

"as long as the company can prove it was you who gave the oral agreement"

They also have to prove what you agreed to.

"Today, there is no way that I don't control the money they want from me."

You control it. You can recall any booking for some weeks.

"Because what they provide (cheap local calls demanded by the political fields, network for calling companies to use, etc.) is an externality for the society"

Why is it an "externality"?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by HershOstropoler
Why is it an "externality"?

An externality are the consequences of an economic activity over the rest of the economy, in ways that are not intended for the profit of the externality-producing company.
Externalities happen when a company externalizes costs (i.e makes the whole society pay instead of itself, like polluting companies), or when it externalizes the profit (i.e when the whole society profits from the service, like public lighting).

A healthy and efficient telecom network, just like road network, rail network etc. is good for the economy at large. For the time being, DT is required to provide such an externality to Standort Deutschland, yet it is bundled with its activity as a telecom supplier.

[HershOstropoler]

That doesn't answer the question. Why is it an externality for companies to have a network in place that they pay for? Sounds more like like services of common interest, when we talk about the network in lowly populated ares or such.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by The Andy-Man
does the problem come about because the general public have neithewr the intelligence or the inclination to actually 'choose' who supplies their power? They will just have who ever they have got, and not care?

It's not a supply problem (or you'd have outages all the time), it's a problem of complex, large-scale interconnection and the fact that with electricity, you're dealing with the only commodity in which you have to closely match variable consumption to supply in real time.

Also, electrons are dumb, so they don't know or care about the contractual reality of who the end user buys his supply from - all they do is follow the path of least resistance down the wire.

[Ned]

Interesting thread. But, after reading it, I still feel distinctly uniformed.

The media reports that there has been no private capital investment in the NE grid since the '60s and none by "public" (what does this mean?) since the '70s. This implies that the grid capacity and age are now a problem that must be addressed. This is also implied in Bush's suggestion that the grid be modernized.

As to why the grid has not be modernized, the media report two problems and MtG cites a third:

1) NIMBY
2) Environmental concerns
3) Consumers do not want to pay for the cost to achieve 100% vs. 99.9% reliability (MtG).

There also may be some problem with individual operators not maintaining their portion of the grid to sufficient reliability levels. Is there a way to "unplug" these operators from the grid. What is the enforcement mechanism for maintaining quality on the grid?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ned
Interesting thread. But, after reading it, I still feel distinctly uniformed.

The media reports that there has been no private capital investment in the NE grid since the '60s and none by "public" (what does this mean?) since the '70s. This implies that the grid capacity and age are now a problem that must be addressed. This is also implied in Bush's suggestion that the grid be modernized.

As to why the grid has not be modernized, the media report two problems and MtG cites a third:

1) NIMBY
2) Environmental concerns
3) Consumers do not want to pay for the cost to achieve 100% vs. 99.9% reliability (MtG).

There also may be some problem with individual operators not maintaining their portion of the grid to sufficient reliability levels. Is there a way to "unplug" these operators from the grid. What is the enforcement mechanism for maintaining quality on the grid?

The media doesn't know ****. Apparently, they don't even know what they mean by "grid"

Any time you add transmission voltage lines ( >60 kV for secondary transmission, >110 kV for primary transmission, >220 kV for regional transmission), reconductor or upconductor existing transmission lines, add circuits on existing single circuit routes, add substation capacitors to existing lines, add or change breakers, relays or transformers at existing transmission substations, or add transmission substations, you're "investing in the grid." There have been hundreds of such projects since the '60s.

The "grid" is nothing more than a colloquial name for the entire interconnected transmission system as a whole. It's merely a collection of all the component bits and pieces. The press is so stupid (and the public at large is about that same) that if you have a groundbreaking ceremony and some three martini lunch pompous guy in a grey suit, a white shirt, and a brand new, never been worn hardhat leans on a shovel and says in a gravelly voice "wur modurnizin' the grrrriiiiid" all the press people will nod like a bunch of bobblehead dolls and run off happily. If you tell them this is phase 2 of a five phase transmission upgrade and reconductoring project, they'll look at you like you're going Brak-ak-ak-AK like one of the martians in Mars Attacks.

The enforcement mechanisms vary with the specific issue, and it can be anything from seizure, to loss of access to off-system resources, to civil suits, to administrative law actions in front of either FERC or state regulators. Basically, utilities that systematically violated RRC protocols get new management, and/or go out of business. Nobody has been dumb enough to do it yet.