Well-written article that highlights the contrast between what Allegheny wants and what they say we "need".
I especially liked that line "But the blackout argument is bogus, Overland contends. “A review of recent blackouts…shows that they occurred during off-peak times when utilities were overloading the lines.” In other words, they were selling more electricity to distant buyers than the system could transmit."
I would like to get the data showing when blackouts actually occur, relative to peak load periods.
JBK
"Vickie Wolfe" wolfev@verizon.net 2/24/2009 1:53 AM >>>
----- Original Message ----- From: Sam Stetson To: Charles Pique ; haught@wvgazette.com ; IBtreehugger@gmail.com Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 7:45 PM Subject: the "hookup"
Another View From the Bridge: What Does Needing Mean Posted Mon, 02/23/2009 - 08:59 by carol white http://discuss.epluribusmedia.net/node/3724
Mark Dewey has kindly let me post his latest editorial in the Blue Ridge Leader -- a Follup to his Last Post on the Alleghany Power's Plans to Connect West Virginia coal-powered generators to Maryland and New Jersey.This time he discusses how the federal "regulatory" process has worked as a result of the hookup between big coal and the Bush Crowd..
The View From the Ridge By Mark Dewey February 20, 2009
What Does Needing Mean? Henry David Thoreau, America’s first conservationist, believed that much of what we say we need is not merely unnecessary but actually harmful. That may be the case with new electricity transmission projects like PATH.
Carol Overland, a lawyer specializing in utility regulation, believes that before building any more high voltage towers, we should determine not only how much electricity we need, but also what the word ‘need’ means in this context. That the word means one thing to the people who want to build the towers and something else to us is cause for concern, since we’ll have to pay for the towers, look at the towers, and live with the lifestyle the towers will impose.
To most of us, need means local load service to light our houses, heat our water, and freeze our food—maybe also to run our wastewater treatment facility and the dryers at the Laundromat. And years ago, that’s what need meant to power companies, too, because regulation let them provide electricity only to people in their service area. But those controls were abolished, freeing power companies to sell electricity the same way Chrysler sells cars: on the open market.
“North American Electric Reliability Corporation… admits that the transmission system is sufficient to meet local load-serving needs,” Carol Overland writes on the website Gristmill, “but the transmission grid is not sufficient for market purposes.” So Allegheny Energy needs to expand its transmission system.
Paul Evanson, Chairman, President, and CEO of Allegheny Energy, said as much on February 11, at a meeting with investment bankers from Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and other financial institutions. “Our transmission projects are key to Allegheny’s growth,” Evanson said, “so it’s very important that we maintain our construction schedule for TrAIL’s in-service date of June 11 and make the state regulatory filings for PATH in the coming months.”
Evanson also said that Allegheny had secured “incentive rate treatment from FERC which included a 14.3 per cent return” on whatever they spend to build PATH—a return paid by us. “2009 will be a very challenging time,” Evanson said, “[but] I’m confident we can weather the economic downturn and keep our multiple long-term growth catalysts substantially intact.”
How does Allegheny do that? The first step is to get a Certificate of Need from the State Corporation Commission, which approves only new construction that’s “reasonable and prudent,” Overland says. “Opportunity to play the market is not reasonable and prudent…[so] transmission projects for market trading are couched in terms of local load-serving need.”
The need to expand local service is usually justified by the threat of blackouts. For example, to win approval for TrAIL, Allegheny argued that the mid-Atlantic region would be vulnerable to blackouts during hours of peak demand by the year 2013. Building to satisfy peak demand means spending billions on infrastructure to continuously satisfy needs that may exist for only a few hours every year. The rest of the time that extra capacity is used to make Allegheny Energy more attractive to investors at Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank.
But the blackout argument is bogus, Overland contends. “A review of recent blackouts…shows that they occurred during off-peak times when utilities were overloading the lines.” In other words, they were selling more electricity to distant buyers than the system could transmit. And projections of increased local demand may also be dubious. “Despite their propensity to overstate need,” Overland says, “several utility CEOs recently admitted that use has decreased between 3 and 9 percent.”
“We also need renewable generation,” Overland points out, “and we have an equally compelling need to reduce CO2 emissions, and the toxic waste of electrical generation, needs not readily recognized in energy planning.”
And we need to cultivate a conservative attitude to reduce waste. After all, wasting something is the opposite of needing it. If we put compact fluorescent bulbs in all our lights, we’d save enough energy to forestall any argument about blackouts caused by growing local need. In fact, Overland suggests, conservation could reduce today’s so-called need by 10 percent.
But if we allow Allegheny Energy to define the term need, we’ll soon be paying $1.5 billion for more 160-foot iron towers to make the company look good to Citigroup. And once those towers are in place, the direction of energy planning and policy will be set in iron and stone.
“We remain dedicated to enhancing shareholder value in years ahead,” President Evanson assured the moneymen. That’s what “need” means to him. Let’s tell him what it means to us.