by Bill

Every five years, the WV Division of Energy creates a five year energy plan for WV.

Here is what the WV Code says the Division of Energy is supposed to do:

Creation of the division is intended to provide leadership for developing energy policies emphasizing the increased efficiency of energy use, the increased development and production of new and existing domestic energy sources, the increased awareness of energy use on the environment and the economy, dependable, efficient and economical statewide energy systems capable of supporting the needs of the state, increased energy self-sufficiency where the ratio of indigenous to imported energy use is increased, reduce the ratio energy consumption to economic activity and maintain low-cost energy. The energy policies and development plans shall also provide direction for the private sector.

If you don't think any of that is happening right now, particularly in WV's electricity system, quit bitching and start writing.

In mid-August, the Division of Energy posted the three parts of its draft energy plan for 2013 to 2017 on its Web site here, here and here.  I think it is pretty goofy to publish a draft plan that doesn't connect the dots among the state's fossil fuel industry, renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, so you will have to read all three sections and pull them together yourself.

Once you have read the plan, you have three choices.  You can submit your comments by snail mail on paper, you can submit them on a form at the Division's Web site here, or you can attend one of three public meetings and submit comments in person.

Here is the information on the public meetings taken from Pam Kasey's story on Grounded:

The public meetings will take place at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington, the Erickson Alumni Center at WVU and the Martinsburg Holiday Inn.

Registration begins at each venue at 9 a.m., and meetings begin at 9:30.

Asked why meetings are scheduled at a time of day when most people are at work, Herholdt said similar meetings held during the workday for the 2007 energy plan attracted large numbers of participants, so evening meetings were not considered at this time.

Presentations at each meeting will be followed by time for public recommendations, which will be spoken before those assembled. Suggestions also are accepted at www.energywv.org/energyplan.

Be aware that all commenters at the public meetings will be limited to two minutes, so you should probably also submit written comments if you have more to say.

Cross posted from The Power Line, the View from Calhoun County

by Bill

The US media is full of stories about our decrepit electrical grid.  Power companies and politicians respond by saying we need more high voltage transmission lines.

Are they right?  I would argue that they are not.  When a particular technology requires a major overhaul and large amounts of new capital investment, you don't pour all that new investment into the obsolete technology.  Back in 2006, AEP came up with a power line pipedream that it had created for the US Dept. of Energy.  The AEP plan was to build a brand new 765 kV transmission system in the US at a cost AEP estimated at $100 billion.  $100 billion was probably a wildly low estimate.  If you had $200 billion to invest in our electrical system, why would you invest it in what amounts to a 50 year old technology?

The centralized grid depends not only on bulk transmission lines, but on huge generating plants far from electric load in population centers.  For the last 20 years, electric generation plants in the US have been getting smaller and closer to load, not bigger and more distant.  Larger coal fired and nuclear plants have been cancelled one after the other, as investors have shied away from the uncertainty and risk involved with this technology.  So if we build AEP's pipedream, there may not be any mammoth generating plants to connect to it in 30 years.

Here is an excellent description of how new microgrid technology offers a way out of our obsolete centralized grid.

This story starts out the way most other stories on the grid begin:

Most Americans don't have to think much about energy reliability. We plug in a computer and it powers up; we flip a switch and the lights come on.

While very reliable today, the U.S. electricity grid is old and has gone at least five decades without a significant technological upgrade.

But instead of advocating more of the same, the article goes on:

A microgrid is a smaller power grid that can operate either by itself or connected to a larger utility grid. Microgrids can serve areas as small as a few houses, all the way up to large military installations.

"If your home was part of a microgrid, you could continue to receive power even when the utility power goes out," NREL Electrical Engineer Mariko Shirazi said. "It gives you the ability to ride through any disturbances or outages by seamlessly switching over to locally generated power."

It's important to note that a backup power system — like a diesel generator — is not the same as a microgrid. Backup generators supply power to local loads in the event of an outage, but there is usually a delay or blip when you lose power and disconnect from the utility grid before the backup kicks in. In addition, a backup system is never meant to run continuously, nor to put power into the grid. However, the reverse is true — a microgrid can serve as a backup power supply.

A microgrid senses the quality of the power flowing through the grid. In the event of an outage, it can disconnect from the grid at a moment's notice. It can also leverage solar, wind, or stored energy to supplement a dip in the current power supply. If things are running smoothly with the regional grid, a microgrid generating electricity from renewable sources can export that clean energy to the grid for everyone's use.

Just Connect and Go?

The major components of a microgrid include a source of power generation, local loads, and electrical switching gear. It might also include inverters and energy storage — all of which sounds easy enough to just connect up to get started, right?

"These technologies are in different stages of maturity; the challenge is to get them all to operate together in a stable, concerted way to accomplish the goals of efficiency, security, and energy reliability — all of which are required from a microgrid," NREL Electrical Engineer Greg Martin said.

Meeting this challenge of bringing microgrid technology to the average electrical consumer is the real investment in the future of our grid, not a more brittle centralized grid based on 50 year old technology.

And by the way, the description of a microgrid is essentially a description of the photovoltaic system we have on our farm -- power company connection, hybrid inverter that controls switching, solar panel independent generation and a battery storage system.  A micro-microgrid.  It would not be difficult to scale up this individual microgrid to serve a neighborhood or even a city.

Cross posted from The Power Line, the View from Calhoun County.

by Keryn

What do power companies hate?  It's not the "magnetic generator" scam.  That makes the power companies laugh!

Power companies hate distributed generation and consumers who become energy producers in direct competition with the power companies.

The power companies have spent years teaching you how to be stupid about electricity and continue to feed at their money-making trough.  The for-profit power companies need to maintain their monopolies on large-scale, centralized generation and an ever expanding network of high-voltage, long distance transmission lines to deliver their product to you.

However, a sea change is taking place that has the power companies scared silly.  Consumers are investing in their own generators, and becoming direct competitors by deploying their own small-scale renewable systems, such as solar, wind, or geothermal.  Consumers are also becoming more energy efficient by replacing old power-guzzling appliances and lighting with newer, more efficient, options.  This is the only real way to "cut your electric bill in half."  A diagram for a 1950s science fair experiment to build your own generator using magnets isn't going to help you.  You have to help yourself by becoming an educated and proactive energy producer.

by Bill

At the Coalition for Reliable Power, we talk a lot about distributed generation.  Big words.  Abstract concept.

With the current blackout (It is current, because there are still people in WV without power.  The blackout is still very current for them.), tens of thousands of West Virginians found out exactly what distributed generation means.

For the last two weeks, a significant portion of WV's electrical load, for at least the most critical functions, has been provided by gasoline generators, diesel generators, natural gas generators and solar arrays located at homes and businesses.  THAT is distributed generation.

The problem in emergencies is that this emergency distributed generation suffers from a number of problems:

1. Hydrocarbon fuels are expensive.  Gasoline generator companies claim that their generators produce electricity for $.90 per kwh.  That estimate is likely based on gas prices that are lower than current ones.  I have neighbors who told me that they spent as much as $300 on fuel go get through the current blackout.
2. In emergency situations, fuel supply is often unreliable.  Right after a blackout happens, many gas stations are themselves without power.  When they can pump gas, everyone is flocking to their stations, and they run out of fuel quickly.
3. Generators of all kinds are noisy.  A number of people have told me that running their generators all day just about drove them crazy from the constant noise.
4. There are no automatic systems built into home and business electrical systems that isolate homes from the electrical grid.  If homeowners forget to turn off their main breakers, repair people can be injured by generator power feeding back into power lines that they are trying to fix.
5. When the emergency is over, people put their generators away and don't use them again until the next blackout.  They buy a piece of equipment that may spend years not providing any service, and may even deteriorate from not being run very often.
6. People don't plan very well for their critical needs during blackouts.  Many just feed their generators into their breaker boxes with little thought to the capacity of the generator or the loads they will need to put on it.  They just run their generator all day (at $1 per kwh), wasting money and gasoline.  Other people run a maze of extension cords through their yards and houses, creating significant fire and shock hazards.
7. At least one person has to remain near the generator, at least a couple of times a day, to feed gasoline or diesel fuel.  This is not a problem with natural gas generators or generators with large fuel tanks, but most homeowners were tethered to their homes through much of the blackout for fear that their generators would run out of gas, or a breaker would shut down the machine, and no one would be home to fix the problem.

The fact is that we now have generation and electrical storage technologies that are available and affordable that eliminate all of these problems with the current state of emergency distributed generation.  Homeowners and businesses all over WV have installed solar powered generating systems with battery back up banks that got them through the blackout safely, noiselessly and with little or no fuel cost.  And, these solar based systems continue to generate power every day between emergencies.

In fact, we can build a whole electrical system, from the bottom up, based on distributed generation.  Power companies in the US and WV have billions of dollar invested in obsolete, centralized grid technologies.  These companies also control most of the regulatory environment in the US and WV and actively block the introduction of new distributed grid technologies and incentives to help people invest in their own generation systems.

I have had this link on The Power Line about microgrids based on distributed generation since 2009.  Germany leads the world in advanced distributed generation technology.  Germans are rapidly expanding locally developed power projects based on cooperatives, cogeneration, solar power and wind turbines.  The growth of local generation in Germany, as well as strong government support, has led to the rapid development of microgrids and the technologies that support them.

Why can't WV political leaders and the PSC wake up to the promotion of real reliability, instead of focusing on emergency response to blackouts every 3 years or so?

As WV's state transmission and distribution systems (most of which are over 40 years old) continue to deteriorate, rates will continue to rise to pay for repairs, and the expenses of more frequent blackouts will mount.  There has been no real response from the PSC or state government to stop this downward spiral.  Their hands off approach to power reliability has been disastrous so far.

If you are sick and tired of waiting around for politicians to fix this problem, contact a WV solar power installer like PIMBY or MTV Solar or Alterra Renewable Energy.  You will be surprised at how affordable your own system will be.  You will have reliable electricity, and your "backup" system will produce power every day of the year. (Yes, solar panels produce power on cloudy days, too.)

You've been doing distributed generation already.  Why not do it right?

Cross posted from The Power Line, the View from Calhoun County

by Bill

It used to be that "cheap" coal (unless you count all the deaths from externalized costs) meant that WV was a great place for electricity-intensive industries like aluminum smelting.  In 2008, Century Aluminum in Ravenswood decided that was the case and shut down their plant.

WV politicians have claimed that "the recession" caused Century to leave the state.  Now we are beginning to see the situation a little differently.  On Friday, we learned from George Hohmann in the Charleston Daily Mail that Century wants AEP rate payers and WV tax payers to provide the company "comfort" about the profitability of their Ravenswood plant.  In an editorial on Friday, the Daily Mail editorial board appropriately called the Legislature's giveaways and Century's rate payer fleecing "corporate welfare backed by rate payers" and subtitled the editorial "Other power customers should not be backstopping Century Aluminum."

In the last Legislative session, the Legislature gave away $20 million of the coal severance tax revenue to "comfort" Century.  The Legislature also offered "incentives," in the form of tax credits, to coal companies to participate in the program to cut AEP's fuel costs for Century's electric bill.  And now, according to Hohmann's story, Century wants AEP rate payers to guarantee Century's profit by lowering Century's electric rates if the price of aluminum falls below $2000 per metric ton.  And where will that money come from to pay Century's electric bill?  Other rate payers, of course.  Someone has to pay for that electricity.

Consumer Advocate Byron Harris has done the math.  He has looked at futures prices for aluminum and concluded that Century wants the PSC to lock AEP rate payers into rate subsidies, because the price of aluminum will probably not reach $2000 per metric ton for many years.

Last week, we also learned that Century is a chronic deadbeat.  Back in 2006, Century asked the PSC for special favors to pay its electric bill.  As it turns out, Century couldn't even meet the terms of that special treatment.  The company now owes AEP $22.7 million from that past scheme.  And, of course, AEP has the Legislature's new bailout bond scheme ready to dump this cost on WV rate payers.  Century's bad debt from 2006 is one big reason why AEP wants much more from the bond scheme than they told the Legislature back in March.  And AEP's lobbyist assured the legislators that the bond bailout would not cause rates to rise.  Forgive me, but "chump" is the only word I have that fits the legislators' actions.

The WV Energy Users Group, the group of large industrial and commercial users who regularly push for special treatment on their electric rates at the PSC, is also worried that a lot of Century's electric bill will get pushed off onto them.  George Hohmann wrote another excellent story on this situation last week.  So the Legislature's special favors and PSC special rate deals have the potential to increase costs not only for taxpayers and residential rate payers, but they will raise costs for many of the other large businesses that provide jobs and tax revenue for the state.

Yesterday, Keryn posted a comment on my earlier Century/AEP post on The Power Line.  Here is what she said:

"Why is no one examining the real problem here… the cost of APCO’s electricity? Perhaps if they weren’t reliant on increasingly expensive coal for most of their generation, businesses could afford to operate at a profit in WV without subsidies from ratepayers and taxpayers. It happens in other states, and even within WV, plenty of businesses operate without subsidies."

So where does all this Rube Goldberg financing and rate payer rip off leave us?  Is the problem really "the recession" or "falling demand"?  Or is it something more fundamental about WV's electrical system?  After all, Century's big problem is electric rates.  And what have WV's electric rates been doing in the last ten years?  Rising rapidly.  And why have those rates been rising rapidly?  Almost entirely from the rapidly rising price of steam coal.  And where does 98% of WV's electricity come from? Coal.

It could very well be that WV's over-dependence on coal as a source of electricity has created an ossified and inflexible power system that is now locked in to rising electric rates for the foreseeable future.  Along with the myth that WV has the lowest electric rates in the US (It doesn't, WV now ranks 11th lowest in the US), the myth that WV's low power costs generate industrial jobs may also be gone up in smoke.

So far, WV political leaders have responded by transferring the costs of out of state corporations onto the backs of people who actually live in WV.  This is a recipe for disaster.  WV 's dependence on coal for electricity hurts our state in two ways: (1) it has locked us into a constantly rising cost spiral, and (2) it prevents diversification of our power sources, which itself can become a driver of innovation and economic growth.

Cross posted from The Power Line

by Bill

PJM Interconnection issued a press release today documenting the dramatic increase in solar generation across the PJM region.

In 2009, the WV Legislature and Gov. Manchin passed the WV Renewable and Alternative Portfolio Standard law to sabotage the development of solar power in WV.  The results are clear.  Here is the map from the PJM press release.  Look at NJ, where incentives are strong and PV installation has been exploding.  Compare NJ's results with WV.  In fact, compare WV with just about any other state in PJM.  Pathetic.

If you are fighting PATH, you should thank our friends in NJ, because they are taking responsibility for their own power generation, insuring that coal by wire transmission lines like PATH can never be built.

Cross posted from The Power Line

by Keryn

The Sierra Club submitted this letter to the WV PSC regarding the Commission's scrutiny of FirstEnergy's decision to close the Albright, Rivesville and Willow Island coal-fired generation plants in West Virginia on September 1, 2012.  Regular readers will remember an earlier post about the meeting Sierra Club mentions in their letter. 

So, what's Sierra Club's purpose here?  A successful transition from economic dependence on coal-fired power plants to a cleaner, more prosperous future for the affected West Virginia communities.  Read Sierra Club's success story about closure of a coal-fired plant in Centralia, Washington, that gave new hope to the community, instead of leaving them high and dry, as FirstEnergy intends to do to the West Virginia communities.   A similar story is playing out in other states affected by FirstEnergy's plant closure plans. 

FirstEnergy's abandonment of these communities that have supported their highly profitable coal-fired generation plants over the years raises the larger question of corporate social responsibility.  Some of these plants date back to the 1920s -- nearly 100 years of profits for FirstEnergy and its predecessors!  It also means nearly 100 years of these communities depending on the economic livelihood these plants have provided.  Now FirstEnergy has made the decision to close these plants during difficult economic times without giving anything back to the communities that have supported them and stoically accepted the pollution of their local environment by these plants in exchange for the good-paying jobs they provided.  To add insult to injury, FirstEnergy points the finger of blame at the EPA, when the reality is that FirstEnergy's closure decision is in their own pecuniary interest.

What social responsibility does FirstEnergy have to these communities?  Sierra Club tried nicely to get FirstEnergy to the table to talk about their responsibility, but was unsuccessful.  Now the WV PSC is dragging them to the table, kicking and screaming all the way.

FirstEnergy talks a big game about their "community involvement"

"Public service is a privilege and our obligation to serve goes beyond providing energy services to our neighbors. In partnership with other businesses, government and the nonprofit sector, we've pledged our resources and the FirstEnergy Foundation to help make our neighborhoods and communities attractive places to live, work and do business."

but when it comes time to put their money where their mouth is, FirstEnergy doesn't deliver.

Perhaps that's because, in reality, FirstEnergy's "corporate stewardship" consists of payments (subsequently recovered from electric ratepayers) to entities like the Maryland Chamber of Commerce ($20,000) for the self-serving purposes of: "Sponsorship related to corporate stewardship and the education of business leaders about PATH (proposed high-voltage transmission line). The Maryland Chamber of Commerce provides PATH with the opportunity to provide educational materials along with personal discussions of the PATH project and issues relating to the project to municipal, county and state elected officials and staff as well as the general public. Corporate monitoring of organizations activities." 

Another example is their $20,000 "membership" in the Westmoreland (PA) Museum, where former Allegheny Energy CEO Paul Evanson sits on the Board of Trustees.  (see Attachment A of this publicly filed document for compete listing of some of FirstEnergy's self-serving "corporate stewardship" in 2010).

FirstEnergy seems to have plenty of money for "corporate stewardship" when it furthers their own interests, but not when it's truly about corporate social responsibility and paying it forward.  How about it, FirstEnergy, can you walk your talk and do the right thing for the communities affected by your plant closures?  According to this article, you're soon going to have an extra $216M to play with as a direct result of these plant closures.  Helping communities affected by your business decision would be a step toward true corporate social responsibility.

by Keryn

CleanTechnica, who prides itself on being "the most-visited clean energy or cleantech news site in the world" that "share[s], and inspire[s] others to share, correct information on cleantech and its dirty competitors (there’s a lot of misinformation out there)," got ironically fished in by one of the biggest energy industry scams in Washington.  Yesterday, they published an analysis of PJM's 2011 State of the Market Report, to show gains in renewables and demand side management, and a drop in coal-fired resources.  While that part of the article could certainly be fairly argued with (and is, by many flat earth cavemen), CleanTechnica loses all credibility when it finishes up by quoting The COMPETE Coalition as a "group of 622 U.S. electricity industry stakeholders advocat[ing] for competitive electricity markets," and refers to one of COMPETE's PR spin opinion pieces as a "report."  So much for "correct information."

The COMPETE scam isn't even that hard to figure out.  The truth is readily available for any reporter who wants to spend a few minutes doing something more than copying & pasting text from a website.

Here's what the COMPETE Coalition is really all about:  It is a corporate-funded lobbying group intended to protect its Board of Director's generation revenue monopolies, including revenue derived from Reliability Must Run (old, dirty, generation) contracts and new coal-by-wire transmission projects.  I'm sure it's perfectly legal to pretend the coalition is a 501(c)6 trade association with a membership that pays "dues," and not an organization whose sole purpose is lobbying for their own financial interests.  The coalition accomplishes this under the guise of supporting competition in electricity markets, which is the exact opposite of their true goal.  While the APPA article linked below has more general information about COMPETE's overall scam, a recent example of coalition chicanery would be COMPETE's deployment of shills to interfere in New Jersey's LCAPP hearings.  COMPETE claims that RMR contracts and transmission lines produce cheaper electric rates than building new, competitive generation in high-priced markets, like New Jersey's.  This isn't true at all.  In the case of new transmission lines, for instance, the cost of the project is subsidized by ratepayers in 13 other states, making New Jersey's cost of new transmission to satisfy load deceptively "cheaper" only through creative accounting.

The COMPETE Coalition fairy tale was deconstructed in the publicly-filed Formal Challenge to Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline's 2010 Transmission Revenue Requirement.  The Challenge (complaint), which was filed by two concerned ratepayers with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in December 2011, had this to say about COMPETE:

"Still other memberships represent costs incurred through participation in lobbying groups that benefit PATH’s parent companies and should be properly classified as lobbying expenses in Account 426.4.
For example, Allegheny Energy’s membership in COMPETE, which was allocated in part to the PATH companies, was explained as a fee for having an Allegheny Energy employee sit on the COMPETE Board of Directors:
“The PATH Companies incurred $200 (PATH-AYE) and $202.50 (PATH-WV) of the total $25,000 paid to COMPETE in 2010. The fees paid were for board member dues. An employee was on the board of directors and paid dues for that privilege.”
However, COMPETE’s website states that “COMPETE membership is free.” It is unclear why Allegheny Energy paid $25,000 for a membership that is “free” and then recovered the amount from ratepayers.
A look at COMPETE’s “leadership” and their 2010 IRS Form 990 shows that COMPETE is managed by individuals from lobbying firms paid to represent the coalition and that the activity of the coalition consists mainly of lobbying activities. The American Public Power Association, a nonprofit, non-partisan, service organization for the nation's more than 2,000 community-owned electric utilities, claims that COMPETE is a disingenuous industry group whose true agenda is to protect the monopoly revenues of their members:
"So, while cloaking themselves in righteous assertions of competition, Compete’s real agenda is to protect the monopoly revenues received by the existing generator members of their group."
It is highly speculative whether Allegheny Energy’s privilege fees paid to COMPETE provide any tangible benefit to ratepayers. The fees are alleged to provide financial benefit to PATH’s parent company by protecting Allegheny Energy’s monopoly revenues through lobbying, therefore this membership should be properly classified in Account 426.4."

The Challenge detailed only a very brief snapshot of COMPETE's scam because COMPETE was merely one example among many instances of alleged Allegheny Energy bookkeeping fraud itemized in the complaint.  Let's expand a bit on the COMPETE fiction, shall we?

COMPETE's publicly-filed 2010 IRS Form 990 is a treasure trove of truth.  Page 7 lists COMPETE's 12-member Board of Directors.  Many of these 12 individuals are Vice Presidents of corporate "Governmental Affairs" (or equivalent) of some of the biggest (and dirtiest) market controlling generators, such as:  Allegheny Energy, FirstEnergy, BP Energy, Direct Energy, PPL, TXU Energy, Constellation, Exelon and PSE&G.  A couple of others represent huge corporations who use a lot of electricity (and likely have discount deals with their generating board compatriots), such as Wal-Mart, Safeway and Leggett & Platt.

COMPETE's total 2010 expenditures were $2,721,092.  Of that amount, $2,571,142 went to only four companies and one individual.  Page 8 details where COMPETE spent the bulk of their cash in 2010:

Wexler & Walker Public Policy, Lobbying Consultant, $677,043
Covington & Burling, Legal Counsel, $570,077
The Nickles Group, Legislative Advisor, $368,494
Federico Pena, Legislative Advisor, $315,000
Fleishman-Hillard, Marketing Consultant, $640,528

Wexler & Walker, Covington & Burling, Nickles Group and Federico Pena are the team who "put laws in place" that are said to stifle competition and protect the monopoly generation revenue of the coalition's "Board of Directors" companies.  Fleishman-Hillard is their public relations spin doctor who perpetuates the charade that the coalition is advocating "competition."  Now, let's look at COMPETE's "Leadership."  The "leadership" is the coalition's public face:  A representative from Wexler & Walker, a representative from Covington & Burling, a representative from The Nickles Group, and Federico Pena -- which is where the bulk of the coalition's money went in 2010.  Like any good corporate front group, the corporations who bankroll the coalition and their real agenda remain "hidden" from public view... except on the coalition's tax filing.  After the coalition was done paying their front men in 2010, there were only $149,950 of other expenditures for the year (page 10).  Out of that total, they spent $50,000 on a "white paper study" so they could slice and dice data and lie with statistics.  That leaves just $92K for other miscellaneous expenses.  I guess that would include the coalition's political contributions such as those listed here.

Page 15 shows that 90%, or more, of COMPETE's "dues" were non-deductible lobbying and political expenditures.  Unfortunately, "Board of Director" company Allegheny Energy decided to practice some creative accounting of their own and recover these lobbying expenses from ratepayers, which is not allowed under FERC's Uniform System of Accounts. The coalition set up Allegheny's big mistake by labeling their self-interested corporate bankrollers as "members."  COMPETE has three different classes of "members" (page 20).  One class (the "free" memberships offered on the website) are simply "allowed to participate" and cannot vote.  These are their shills.  A second class of "members" pay dues as determined by the third class of "members," and are allowed to vote on limited matters (though nothing of great importance), and serve on the Board of Directors.  I will speculate that this class includes the retailers and manufacturers.  The third class of "members" pay "full dues" and includes only certain Board of Directors and "Executive Committee" members, who are the only ones allowed to vote on the important stuff.  I would wager that these "members" are the corporate energy bankrollers whose financial interests are being served by stifling competition in electric generation markets.

I almost wouldn't mind so much that COMPETE is lying to the public, regulators and the media about their true agenda, however, when "member" Allegheny Energy thought they could get away with recovering their $25,000 "membership" from ratepayers (those same ratepayers the Coalition is supposedly benefiting with their advocacy for "competitive markets"), they compounded the scam by stealing the company's self-serving lobbying expenses from consumers.  That truly offends me.

All of this public information is the "correct information" that CleanTechnica neglected to share, and, unfortunately, brings the veracity of all their published content into question.  I will no longer consider CleanTechnica a reliable source.

Who can resist a headline like this:  "FERC to utilities: 'Change or die'"?  The headline comes from a quote of FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff, "The traditional utility is either going to have to change or die."

What he's talking about here is a future where each end-user has the opportunity to be their own mini-utility and save money simply by having access to real-time load and pricing information.  Of course, you can also do that right now by installing your very own power generating system.

Fierce Energy has published a series of articles about what they are dubbing "prosumers" -- consumers who produce their own energy, whether its through installation of their own solar, wind, geothermal or other renewable energy source, or through response to price signals that curtail their energy use to produce "negawatts," which they then sell back to their utility.

Change is hard for investor-owned utilities with a sense of entitlement to bigger and bigger profits at your expense.  The times, they are a-changin'.  But watching them thrash, struggle and die will be entertaining, at least. 

by Bill

Last night, Energy Efficient West Virginia's Cathy Kunkel and Molly McLaughlin and I gave C4RP's and EEWV's fifth Real Solutions to West Virginia's Rising Electric Rates presentation at the Huntington Public Library.  We spent a half hour yesterday afternoon in an engaging conversation with the Huntington Herald-Dispatch's editorial board, and the paper sent a reporter to cover the evening meeting.

Here is a link to the resulting story.  Reporter Lacie Pierson did a pretty good job of covering the main points of the meeting, but she got a little carried away with paraphrasing many of my comments and enclosing the resulting approximations in quotation marks.

At one point in the story, she attributed comments made by an Appalachian Power employee at the meeting to me.  I had just made the point that the fact that 97% of WV's electricity is generated from coal was the reason we could expect rates to continue rising for the foreseeable future.  The power company employee responded by saying that, in his opinion, WV's rising electric rates had been caused by, in the quote Ms. Pierson attributed to me:

"One of the big problems when it comes to rate increases in the state, Howley said, is that it takes more materials to span the power lines throughout the rural, mountainous geography of the state, which is sparsely populated.

The cost of installing and maintaining materials is greater, while the number of customers is smaller than in more urban areas, Howley said. That means when rate increases are ratified, they take a bigger toll on customers."

This is actually a garbled account of what the APCo employee said.  I would certainly never point to WV's geography as the reason for WV's rising electric rates.  Our state's features have been a part of power company experience from the very beginning.  If this were the cause of high electric rates, WV would have had the highest electric rates in the US, instead of some of the lowest, as in the past.

Ms. Pierson did a good job with the rest of her coverage, and we appreciate her reporting on the meeting.  As we pointed out in the meeting, the issues surrounding our electrical system can be complicated.  It is a tough job for a reporter to walk into a discussion like this with little or no background and put out a 100% accurate account of the discussion.