the editor talks with you

It seemed like a good idea when the brainiacs were setting up the regulated electric monopoly system. To protect the ratepayers and the power providers as well, they made 2 rules: #1. To protect ratepayers from greedy power providers, eletricity rates would be a direct pass through. What it cost to generate and deliver a kilowatt of energy would be all you could charge your ratepayers. #2. To encourage providers to improve productivity, efficiency and performance, they could make a profit on those costs. This was to drive down rates. In other words, the more money you spent on efficiency and improvements, the more money you could generate for your investors and yourself, That’s why it was so attractive for SCANA, its SC Electric & Gas subsidiary and taxpayer-owned Santee Cooper partner, to sink – and critics say waste – $9 billion in a nuclear power project that will probably never generate a single kilowatt of elecricity. They spent billions with little results, energy expert Jim Clarkson of Resource Management told us. $2 billion of those wasted dollars came from you. If the Public Service Commission would allow them to do it, Clarkson said, SCANA would have built pyramids. That’s the way the economics of the regulated monopoly power system works. The more you borrow, spend and waste, the more profit you make. Take hurricanes and other natural disasters. The power company masters love them. The more they spend on downed lines and restoring power, they more they profit. The PSC has largely been a rubber stamp for their requests. To the PSC’s credit, they cut that profit margin, which was factored into every rate hike, from 10.75% to 9.9%. But that’s still a huge profit margin when you’re dealing in billions of dollars. It seems clear the regulated monopoly system doesn’t work. It’s time the brainiacs came up with a competitive system to drive down electric rates.

– Jerry Bellune