Opinion from a liberal: Utility’s power may be eroding | EffinghamHerald.net

Here’s the thing that Tom Crawford, below, either fails to understand, or glosses over in order to trash Republicans: the Public Service Commission did indeed adopt a risk-sharing mechanism. Instead of simply using a template created by staff, they chose to monitor ongoing expenditures on Vogtle and decide on a case-by-case basis which were prudent expenditures, which the company can recover from ratepayers, and which were made imprudently, and which the company will have to eat.

For many decades, Georgia Power has been the 800-pound gorilla in state politics.

Whatever the utility giant wanted, it usually got. Those things would include billion-dollar rate increases, the election of a favored candidate for governor, or the passage of a bill by the Legislature.

Georgia Power has been able to do this in large part because of a Public Service Commission that has been more of a rubberstamp than a regulatory commission.

The PSC is made up of five conservative members who are all Republicans. There aren’t any pesky liberals or tree-hugging environmentalists to complain that Georgia Power is making too much money or running too many power plants that emit greenhouse gases.

When Georgia Power asked for the authority to start charging its customers for the cost of building two nuclear reactors six years before the reactors would even start generating their first kilowatt hour of electricity, the PSC granted it.

When Georgia Power decided it didn’t want any kind of risk-sharing system that would protect its customers from rate gouging if there were huge cost overruns on the Vogtle nuclear project, the PSC did not require the utility to implement one.

During the period from 2009 through 2012, when the country endured the worst economic downturn since the great depression and businesses failed left and right, the PSC allowed Georgia Power to keep earning a return of roughly 11 percent on the electricity it generated for its customers.

It would be difficult to find a sweeter deal than that.

A week later, the PSC began its review of more than $730 million worth of cost overruns on the Vogtle nuclear reactors, which are being built by Georgia Power, electric membership cooperatives and municipal power companies.
Georgia Power believes that these cost increases should be passed along to customers in the form of higher rates. PSC members, on the other hand, are talking about such radical notions as requiring the utility to eat those costs and make shareholders pay for the Vogtle mistakes.
This is strange talk indeed from the PSC. It’s almost unheard of for any state government agency to say no to a Georgia Power request. Will the commissioners have the gumption to stand their ground on this issue?

via Utility’s power may be eroding.