Posted on 06/17/2008 5:17:50 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
What happens when you don't build more power plants? Get ready for spiking electricity rates, brownouts and even blackouts as demand soars
If you think runaway oil prices are upsetting, just wait for what's in store for electricity. Similar forces are in play. Demand is rising fast; supply is not. The cost to get coal and natural gas out of the ground is going up, and to that expense must be added the cost of the carbon permits that Congress and the presidential candidates are contemplating. Environmentalists are getting power plants scotched. China is sucking up energy. Leave such dynamics in play long enough, and price spikes in electricity follow. But that's just the beginning. We may be facing brownouts (voltage reductions), even rolling blackouts.
By as early as next year our demand for electricity will exceed reliable supply in New England, Texas, the West and, by 2011, in New York and the mid-Atlantic region. A failure of a power plant, or a summer-afternoon surge in the load, could make for a blackout or brownout. "There really isn't any excess in the system," says Rick P. Sergel, chief executive at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).
Price shocks are already occurring. In May, long before peak summer demand, the wholesale price of juice jumped twofold in Texas, to $4/kilowatt-hour, 25 times the average retail rate in the country. Prices exceeded the allowed rate of $2 for seven days and threatened the viability of power resellers who contracted to deliver cheap rates to consumers. New Yorkers may suffer a summer of price discontent if regulators are right about peak wholesale prices jumping by up to 90%.
In the past few years, in dozens of utility regions such as Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio, price hikes have ranged from 20% to 80%.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
They are fiddling while Rome burns.
They will propose increased subsidies for solar, wind and geothermal. Then they will propose subsidies for poor people and the aged.
Nancy Pelosi has already proposed nationalizing the U.S. energy industry.
yitbos
Well… whether a RAT or a RINO wins the U.S. Presidency he will grant amnesty to over 30 million illegal aliens who will in turn bring another 100 to 150 million ‘close’ family members and friends from the old country thus increasing the domestic demand for energy.
And guess what happens next…
"Senator Barbara Boxer [D-CA] is willing to resort to any means necessary to be 'free of' oil companies. That includes making gas prices increase across the board for Americans, she said on MSNBC’s 'Morning Joe' June 11."
yitbos
....and Sebelius put the kaibosh on a new state-of-the-art coal fired plant in Western Kansas because the electricity wouldn’t be used in Kansas.
To finish off the article that was exerpted to 300 words:
"Rather than curse the darkness, invest in government mismanagement. There aren't any good pure-play stocks in backup power, but Cummins (nyse: CMI - 67) and Caterpillar (nyse: CAT - 51), both excellent companies, have some exposure here. Schneider Electric (124, SU) and Emerson Electric (nyse: EMR - 57) sell, among many other things, devices that help industrial customers cope with unreliable electric grids. Utilities may end up running their peak-power natural-gas-fired power plants around the clock, which would be good for Anadarko Petroleum (nyse: APC - 80) and Chesapeake Energy (nyse: CHK - 60)."
yitbos
Hairy Reed nixed one in Southern Nevada.
yitbos
Doesn’t surprise me in the least what any [D-CA] says. They are a suicidal bunch…
... and they are going to blame it all on Bush. Gore Vidal has already said that it's going to take 100 years to undo "Bush's damage". I doubt he will last that long as a whipping boy, but he will do for a decade, I think.
bump
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