Posted on 07/28/2014 7:54:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
What’s happening in Arizona right now is sufficient to make every conservative shudder. And I’m not talking about the border crisis. I am talking about the state’s largest regulated utility, Arizona Public Service (APS). APS is literally attempting to purchase its regulators in the state’s August 26th Republican primary (early ballots go out this week). If successful, the implications are national, especially for fledgling solar power, and crony capitalism will have a new model that will boomerang on the Republican Party.
First, a little background. APS has concluded that too much energy choice via rooftop solar is bad for it. The more people turn their lights off, making an energy choice of rooftop solar, the less money the publicly-traded electric monopoly makes. In sunny Arizona, people are understandably going solar as costs have come down – even though subsidies have gone away – by the tens of thousands. As their energy costs have skyrocketed in some areas, churches, schools, seniors, rich, poor, you name them - everyone is considering a switch to the less-costly solar.
Last year, APS attempted to get the all-Republican Arizona Corporation Commission, its regulators, to pass a massive new tax that would make going with rooftop solar too expensive. By a 3-to-2 vote, the commissioners rejected the APS plan to “tax the sun,” but still passed a much smaller tax.
Well, APS didn’t like that very much. Who were these Republicans after all, to discover that energy choice should be much like school and health care choice?
Fast forward to this election year. Two seats on the Arizona Corporation Commission are open. APS has found at least a couple of dark money front groups – fooling the Arizona Free Enterprise Club as one, an organization that was started by legitimate conservatives – through which to route ratepayer money to, in order to install its two favored Republican candidates: the inexperienced and Second Amendment enemy Doug Little and the lobbyist largesse-loving State Representative Tom Forese. Another group, mysteriously named “Arizona 2014,” tellingly will not disclose its donors. "Save Our Future Now" has issued hit pieces against Parker - a whopping $82,000 to oppose him in what is usually considered a fairly low-level race in Arizona. Even more telling, APS has not denied donating to the groups this year, even though it denied donating to groups like that in previous elections.
The government-regulated monopoly APS is spending mightily to own and control its regulators. This is not the way American democracy is supposed to work, especially when Arizona Republicans have two other good conservative Republican choices in this race.
One is conservative African-American Vernon Parker. Parker served in both Bush administrations, and as mayor of Paradise Valley, Ariz., and was the area’s 2012 GOP nominee for Congress. His story is an amazing American one. Born into a neighborhood of drugs and crime, he escaped it to become one of the Republican Party’s most inspirational leaders. He is running on a diverse team with former Arizona State Representative Lucy Mason. She once chaired the House Energy Committee, and hails from Republican stronghold Yavapai County in conservative northern rural Arizona. Both oppose the new taxes on rooftop solar that APS wants. Aren’t Republicans supposed to stand against new taxes? Parker and Mason do. Little and Forese do not.
The APS-funded campaign against Parker and Mason tries to tie them to President Obama. Laughable doesn’t even begin to describe such a connection. I know Parker personally and he is very conservative and has no love for Obama - uhhh, he was a Bush appointee.
There are terrible problems with APS currently. Due to the virtual monopolies it owns, some residents with nothing more than dirt yards report water bills as high as their electric bills.
What we do know is this: In Arizona, two conservative Republicans are offering voters not only terrific Republican bona fides, but a commitment to taking on the high-cost energy monopoly.
If APS prevails, using ratepayer money to defeat potential regulators it doesn’t like, it will set freedom and our party back to the 1900s, while advancing crony capitalism to a whole new level. APS realizes that a black conservative Republican like Vernon Parker is a real threat to entrenched liberalism, socialism and corporate subsidies, and so it will stop at nothing to defeat him. APS isn't a "friend" of Republican principles, and the sooner we reject its government subsidized-monopolies, the better to defeat this subtle but ingenuous attack on conservative principles. This type of enemy of liberty will stop at nothing in order to defeat and destroy an intelligent, principled, black conservative.
Send them to prison
Apart from the level of regulation applied to the aspiring crony, there's nothing new here; governments have long claimed the power to play favorites, and corporations have long sought to buy legislators who would make them the favorites. If we're against crony capitalism, let's be consistently against it.
Firefighters, Police, Teachers and welfare recipients have been influencing the elections of those who vote on their pay and benefits forever.
Residential solar does create a problem for the utilities, but the utilities are exaggerating the problem.
Ex-Energy Secretary has the best solution to this problem: the utilities need to stop fighting it and get heavy into residential solar
I do not agree at all with APS political tactics.
However, I do understand some things about electric power generation operations in general and their economics; at least I think I do.
If someone reduces how much electricity they are using, does the utility “slow”, “lower” how much electricity a power plant is generating? No. Its not that simple.
The power generators are not going to run less or more by what you take. They operate and produce at maximum efficiency and from it customers take what they need from the load delivered. What the customers do not take is still there in the load delivered, just not used. The usage itself did not change the cost of operations of the generators or the grid equipment. If lower usage becomes a trend by which demand for building new generators is less, that lowers costs for new equipment ONLY, it does not change the costs of running existing equipment and the need for the utility to get consumers to take all they can from what the generators are putting out. When they can’t, rates go up in spite of less consumption, because less consumption does not in general lower power generation operating costs.
So, IN GENERAL lowering your usage does not, in general, lower the operating costs of a local power grid utility, but it is assumed it ought to lower your bill. It might, and then again I am way more efficient in electric consumption than five years ago, but my bill is higher, not lower. It is not rare to see the local utility asking the public utility commission for a rate increase - arguing that their operating costs are not lower even though consumption is down, and consequently their revenue per unit of energy generated, their ROI, & their profit is down.
Some public utility authorities are rewarding electric companies for the good behavior of helping customers reduce consumption, become more efficient, or augment their electric needs with “alternate” sources. What are the rewards to the electric company? More positive answers to a rate increase.
It is going to be a difficult transition from a grid energy paradigm to an independent energy paradigm. Greater efficiency comes at a cost and we all are going to pay for it, in one form or another. It is a transition I believe technology is pointing to. However, working out the economics of it are not as simple or clear as the technology.
APS influencing Arizona politics?
Who knew!
They’ve been buying Maricopa County politicians for about the last 5 decades. Or more...
“Some public utility authorities are rewarding electric companies for the good behavior of helping customers reduce consumption, become more efficient, or augment their electric needs with “alternate” sources. What are the rewards to the electric company? More positive answers to a rate increase.”
Our “public utility” (PG&E) has been trying to get people to conserve and then when their load drops, they ask for rate increases to cover their “fixed costs,” a big chunk of which is gold balls pension and health care benefits that continue for people who should be let go as excess to need. Ditto for public districts like sewers. Our sewer district has asked for a rate increase and they state right in the application that some of the money is destined for “employee benefits.”
The utility companies - in energy more than telecoms today - are saddled with heavily political supported union shops that have gotten high pension and insurance benefits with political arm twisting through the utility commissions.
Solar energy is not capitalism. For most applications (photovoltaic) solar energy is an economic loser, but for tax credits and other subsidies.
The subsidy that APS is fighting against is this: in Arizona, if a utility customer with solar capability generates more electricity than they need, then they can sell it back to the utility. That seems to make sense, but the corporation commissions sets the price. The price set is not the wholesale price of electricity but the retail price. While APS can buy energy from the Palo Verde nuclear plant at 2 cents/kwh, it is forced to purchase it for 10-20 cents/kwh from retail customers, depending on time of day.
Through subsidies, the government has created competitors for the utility from whom the utility is forced to buy electricity at inflated and non-economic costs. This is what APS is fighting against.
“The utility companies - in energy more than telecoms today - are saddled with heavily political supported union shops that have gotten high pension and insurance benefits with political arm twisting through the utility commissions.”
And local boards. Our Fire Protection District Board is comprised of five members all elected at large. Three of them are now FFs from outside the district who now, thanks to $250k annual incomes can now live here. So our FD FFs get everything they want. Cops are right behind, but at least they have to deal with the town council.
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