Power crisis? Piffle, consumers say

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Power crisis? Piffle, consumers say DIANE NELSON: Power crisis? Piffle, consumers say By DIANE NELSON BEE STAFF WRITER (Published: Friday, December 29, 2000)

California's two biggest utility companies are begging to raise rates and conservationists say the state is megawatts away from rolling blackouts. And the word on the street is: Humbug.

"I'll conserve because I have to conserve so I won't go broke," said Michelle Lee of Modesto, walking with her cell phone and her dog in downtown Modesto. "But I won't do it to help the utilities."

Lee's rates and those of others served by Modesto Irrigation District are going up 15.5 percent Jan. 1. Happy New Year. And officials from Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison want twice that. They claim their companies will go bankrupt if they don't raise rates by at least 30 percent.

"The financial survival of PG&E and possibly the survival of the California economy hang in the balance," Roger Peters, PG&E's general counsel, told the state's Public Utilities Commission in San Francisco Wednesday.

"Cry me a river," Lee said Thursday.

You hear it everywhere. Will Best Buy on Sisk Road stop shining its lights through the night in deference to the energy crisis?

"I don't think so," said Karen Thompson with Best Buy. "That's a decision the corporate office in Minnesota would make, but they do that for security reasons. I haven't heard any plans to change."

Will Brenden Theatres tone down the lights on its marque?

"Not that I know of," said Clarence DeLapena, assistant manager of the multiplex in the the well-lit Tenth Street Place. "That's a decision the general manager would make and he's not available now. But I haven't heard any talk of that."

They don't make crises like they used to. During the gas and water shortages in the '70s, it became patriotic to save. Conservation was chic. (Until the shortages were over, of course, and excess again reigned supreme.)

But the gas and water droughts were different. You didn't doubt the shortage because you saw cars lined at the pumps and crops dying in the fields.

Energy is more mysterious. You flip a switch and the light goes on. Unless it doesn't.

Most people don't understand the spiking and dipping of power through generators and grids. They don't realize that natural gas prices in California are 25 times higher than normal and that the state's power supplies in the Pacific Northwest are drying up like reservoirs in June.

What they know is, the utilities said deregulation would bring savings to consumers. And now they're asking consumers for a multimillion-dollar bailout.

Humbug.

Which brings up another difference between energy and the shortages of old. With the gas shortage, we had a common enemy. We knew who to blame.

OPEC, the Organization of Petrolem Exporting Counties. The Arab oil embargo made conserving gas not just as necessary but an act of national defense.

Who's the villain now? Is it the utilities or the middlemen gouging consumers? Is it the geniuses who brokered deregulation, one of the most expensive public policy miscalculations in state history? (Instead of saving money, California businesses and residents paid $10.9 billion more for electricity last summer than the year before.)

Is it the dot-com craze, the industry that drinks electricity like water?

Maybe it's not worth pointing fingers. You need that energy for closing doors and turning down thermostats and yelling at whoever left the light on.

"Yeah, you become like a mom with teens in the house," said Cindy Hieber, who manages the city of Stockton's Oak Park ice rink, a costly operation when energy rates rise.

She and her cohorts found a way to put the ice in a holding pattern overnight to save the cost of keeping it frozen 24 hours a day. And they cut back on open skating during the peak energy use hours.

"And all that makes a difference. But when I see a door open, and I know our heater is then trying to heat the lobby plus the air outside, I want to know which rear end to kick."

Energy isn't cheap, you know.

Humbug.

http://www.modbee.com/metro/story/0,1113,225668,00.html



-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), December 29, 2000

Answers

I do believe that a few rolling blackouts would change the thinking of a lot of people.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), December 29, 2000.

The idea of any company buying resources and then having to sell at a loss is plan stupid - why did they do it? They should of bought juice to break even point and then implement rolling power failures whenever the demand exceeded that point. That would surely implement conservation.

-- (perry@ofuzzy1.com), December 29, 2000.

I think there's more to this than the high cost of power. Companies don't go into the red 4 billion just to help the citizens of California.

-- David Williams (DAVIDWILL@prodigy.net), December 30, 2000.

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