Where We Live: Preparing For Future Storms

The for-profit monopolies need non-profit competition

Many of the comments made - both on the program and otherwise - have been at least in the right general direction if not entirely right "on the money." Connecticut's two for-profit electricity providers have had a stranglehold on the state's citizens and businesses for FAR too long, resulting in Connecticut having not just the highest electricity rates in the nation (at times 2nd highest) but also among the highest overall costs of living due to the necessity of electricity in virtually all aspects of our lives. But the fact of the matter is that while municipal utilities offer one way of delivering electricity through a non-profit operation, in fact they are generally inefficient and more expensive than multi-municipality non-profit electricity CO-OPS are. Such co-ops exist in many other parts of the country, deliver electricity for less than for-profits can, and generally produce much higher customer satisfaction ratings than do most for-profits. Many of them also are able to purchase electricity more cheaply than most for-profits can because they can often buy at least some of their electricity from non-profit electricity PRODUCERS. Non-profit electricity distribution is *definitely* the way to go, couple with long-term financing (through bonds, if necessary) of the cost to bury at least the most major electricity transmission lines... even if it meant the State or municipalities having to become the official "owner" of those lines and then lease them out (for a fee) to one or more non-profit co-ops for their use (but minus the cost of the co-ops to maintain them).

But the bottom line is that relying exclusively on for-profit electricity distributors, with their additional "overhead" costs that must be born by the state's rate payers, is a situation that Connecticut's citizens and businesses can no longer afford.

Salaries

Utilities are for profit corporations and are owned by shareholders. They re the ones, through Boards od Directors that establish all compensation for utility officers. Not all of the high salaries are recovered in rates. That is up to our utility regulators. Get your facts.

another wallingford Ratepayer

Wallimgford recovers quickly because it is small not because it is better than the NU or UI. By the way, our rates lower because Wallingford Electric Division doesn't pay taxes and yes there's no profit. NU & UI pay su stantisal dollars in local property taxes, state and federal income taxes, which none of the CT municipal utilities. That's the reason for lower rates.

There's just no way your bill is half what it would be at CL&P. Wallingford rates are less but not 50% less. Only way your bill is 50% lower is if you're using 30-40% less. Be truthful!

Facebook comment from Doug

Good show, John. Helpful. Great guests as well. Frankly I think burying the lines over 40-50 years is probably a good start. This isn't a problem that can be fixed overnight, clearly, and government is there to help us over the long-term. Truth is, 40-50 years isn't even that long in the big scheme of things. We're talking about digging hundreds of miles of trenches... your guest was absolutely on target about the poor connection between rate hike proposals and infrastructure decisions. One of your callers also pointed the ridiculous confusion about where the various funds listed on our bills is spent. Clear that up and it'll go a long way toward restoring faith.

But IMHO, we could use some legislation ... any or all of the following:

-break up the utility as a shareholder product and put the public back in public utility. Remove the profit motive. We could try to mess around and require shareholders to live in the service area, but that's really just a can of worms. The executives and shareholders simply hinder the utility's customer service.

-open up the grid to local management - micro grids - and allow small-scale innovation to push forward the model. CL&P and NU are not innovating.

-Immediately require gas stations to acquire backup generators, maybe through tax breaks. I don't know if Florida requires all gas stations to have generators - maybe they do so along evacuation routes. But while we probably don't have the immediate need to think in terms of evacuation routes like Florida, we probably should anyway.

-this may sound ridiculous, but we should consider building electricity-generating windmills near cell towers, or vice versa - put cell equipment on windmills and cover two demands, power and communication. They are 320 feet tall, if I'm not mistaken. But I'm not an electrical engineer so I don't know whether the windmills power generation would interfere with cell signals.

-short-term job-creator: open up the transmission corridors to tree trimming and logging services. Coordinate those on a local level, if need be. This is a no-brainer. CL&P apparently did nothing for the first 48 hours and then spent another 3-4 days focusing most of its efforts on removing trees from the big transmission lines. These lines should never be touched or threatened by tree growth. This was the utility's biggest failure.

-use new media tools like SeeClickFix to open up the lines of communication all the time - not just during a crisis - and provide better information to customers.

Listener email from Marie

Municipal Utilities are best. In Wallingford, not only we were without power for only a few hours, but our electric rate is very in expensive. Our bill is about half of what our old bill was with CL&P in another town.

Listener email from Nina

have you already discussed excutive salaries of our utility folks? if this question isn't exactly on topic today, maybe it could be a topic another time. but i think it really belongs to the discussion today. who approves the salaries, bonuses etc of the high earners at public utilities? and why did they allow such ridiculous salaries for these folks who were asking for these ridiculous salaries but were not asking for the stuff that would have minimized storm damage?