Legalectric

And that’s a good thing, because their SEC filings show that demand is down from 2007-2007, as it is everywhere.  It’s looking like utilities are unable to sustain their drive for long distance market dispatch, and if this trend is the reality, and their stock continues to be in the toilet, they can’t build their transmission dream — this is good news!  Chalk up one for the economic depression!

All of us participating in the Delmarva Power IRP have to make sure the PSC knows about the tanked market, after all, they’re addressing how Delmarva Power will fulfill its demand, and for sure we don’t need new generation (need different generation, to be sure) or any transmission.  As to needing different generation, it’s particularly important at this time to attach a requirement to SHUT DOWN FOSSIL FUEL to any RES.  Without that, they’ll just sell it elsewhere, and we won’t gain anything.

Here’s one example of how the economy can have an impact on electric infrastructure and market. Hot off the press — PEPCO may not be selling stock to finance projects, and the biggest project they’re looking at is the much-detested Mid-Atlantic Power Pathway, electric transmission known as the MAPP line.

And remember, not that long ago, PJM cancelled the part from Indian River to Salem, NJ, at the Salem & Hope Creek nuclear plants.  Here’s what it looks like now, supposedly:

HA!  THEIR MAPS DON’T EVEN REFLECT THAT CHANGE!!

MAPP - PEPCO-PJM Press Release May 19, 2009

The Press Release says:

According to Gausman, PJM has also reviewed the need for the section of the line that would run from Delmarva Power’s Indian River substation near Millsboro, Del., to Salem, N.J., and has decided to move this portion of the line into its “continuing study” category. This means that the reconfigured MAPP line will now extend approximately 150 miles from northern Virginia, across southern Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay, and terminate at Indian River. The change would likely reduce the total project cost from $1.4 billion to $1.2 billion.

(Emphasis added).  Hee hee hee hee hee — “… terminate at Indian River.”  No Indian River to Salem, NJ section.  Cutting a section out is just one more step to tanking the project.  What’s the point of a radial line to Indian River?  Some would say that “hey, there’s transmission there, it’s not a radial line,” but there’s NOT transmission there to facilitate the bulk power transfers coming in on a 500kV line.  The system there is comparatively VERY low voltage.  Others would note that the Indian River plant has two units shutting down, but folks, they’re the smallest units, totalling about 150MW or so, that will not make a big electrical difference, though it has a significant impact on our ability to breathe the air in southern Delaware!  Taking the small Indian River units most probably means that Bluewater Wind should have no problem interconnecting — lets see the interconnection studies with Indian River units off line!

Anyway, here’s the poop — and look at the PEPCO price: $13.39, about half of what it was a year ago ($26.25) (for month, YTD, year and 5 year, go HERE) If you look at the 5 year trend, it’s the same reflected in Xcel’s demand — everything goes south in 2007.  THIS IS NOT A “BLIP” FROM LAST FALL’S CRASH, this is a 2 year, nearly 3 year trend. (For Xcel month, YTD, year and 5 year, go HERE).

From PEPCO’s 2008 SEC 10-K, here’s their 2007-2008 energy delivery numbers (DOWN), regulated and default:

Here’s PEPCO 2007-7008 SEC 10-K info, 2006-6007, regulated and default - these numbers should be the same for the same years, and they’re not, what does that mean:

Here’s the PEPCO 2006 SEC 10-K info, their 2005-2006 energy delivery numbers (DOWN), first regulated sales:

CLICK HERE - PEPCO’s SEC 10-K filings for lots of years to do your own looking!

From Bloomberg:

Pepco CFO May Postpone Investment to Avoid Share Sale

By Katarzyna Klimasinska

June 26 (Bloomberg) — Pepco Holdings Inc.’s new chief financial officer, Anthony Kamerick, is considering postponing some investments beyond 2010 to prevent selling shares below book value.

Pepco, the owner of Washington’s electric utility, currently plans about $1 billion in total capital projects for 2010, mainly on the Mid-Atlantic Power Pathway transmission line and smart grid, Kamerick said. The completion of the transmission line, also known as MAPP, has already been delayed by a year.

“We have to balance, obviously, the need to make sure our system is safe and reliable for the customers,” Kamerick said in a telephone interview yesterday from Washington, where the company is based. “It’s a delicate balance.”

MAPP is scheduled to start service in June 2014 and will run from northern Virginia, across southern Maryland and Chesapeake Bay, to Indian River, Delaware.

Smart grids will be able to detect power failures and automatically isolate them, increasing the reliability of the power system, according to Pepco.

Pepco sold shares at $16.50 each in November and has had a 25 percent decline so far this year. The current price represents 72 percent of book value, or assets minus liabilities, per share, according to a Bloomberg calculation from company data.

Pepco fell 3 cents to $13.39 in composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Kamerick replaced Paul Barry, who resigned, on June 12. He has worked for Pepco and its predecessor, Potomac Electric Power Co., since 1970, most recently as chief regulatory officer.

Fredon School

Dig this:

“Visual simulation” of what towers will look like compared with present strutures

The Susquehanna-Roseland transmission line through Pennsylvania and New Jersey is getting a little hairier, YEAAAAA.  Fredon PALS, a group centered around the Fredon School, which is facing transmission lines over its property(school, above), sent their first Discovery over the bow today.  It’s good stuff, I love it when this happens.

Fredon PALS - First Set of Discovery Requests to PSE&G

Until now, we’d been the only Intervenors who’d sent PSE&G any Discovery, Stop the Lines, that is, and with this filing today, Welcome to the Club, Fredon PALS!!!

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaa!  One for the home team!!!!

First it was NYISO and ISO-New England:

Feb 4 2009 NYISO & ISO-NE Letter to JCSP

Then it was New York’s Deputy Secretary of Energy testifying before Senate Energy Committee:

DeCortis Testimony- March 26, 2009

And now the Governors from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states have stood up against the insane Midwest transmission plans — transmission plans like CapX 2020, JCSP/MTEP, Green Power Express, and the unnamed group announced on April 3rd, starting in North Dakota, banding southern Minnesota, and shooting out into Wisconsin.

Here’s their letter:

East Coast Govs Transmission Letter

It’s blurry, so click the letter and read the whole thing.  An eye opener for the Midwest, those who don’t recognize that there’s a big world out there and it’s not all about Midwest wind.  Folks, you have a marketing problem, your target market says NO!  What about NO can’t you understand?

Once more, it’s David Morris, Institute for Local Self Reliance, telling it like it is.  The PUC process is long over do a complete revamping.  It is based on laws and rules that grew out of the 1970s-1980s transmission fights, and gave people a useful and meaningful way to participate in these proceedings.  But that’s gone, gone with the 2001 changes, gone with the 2005 Transmission Omnibus Bill from Hell, and we’re left with just about nothing.  In other states, there’s Intervenor Compensation which allows Intervenors the ability to pay for expert witnesses, there are free transcripts as a matter of course, and there’s encouragement and support of Intervenors, not a drive to push them out of the process that we see here, that we saw in this CapX proceeding, when the ALJ tried to boot out U-CAN; that we saw in the Excelsior Energy docket (scroll down to “Fourth Prehearing Order”).

David Morris: If it’s citizens vs. utilities, utilities win

The PUC has an approval process that stacks the deck against the public.

By DAVID MORRIS

Last update: April 23, 2009 - 6:50 PM

A few days ago, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) approved a massive high-voltage transmission project known as CapX that will cost Minnesotans an amount equal to the projected biennial state budget deficit and four times the total bill to taxpayers for the Twins and Gophers stadiums.

With respect to the stadiums, Minnesotans were able to actively participate in the decisions, both directly and indirectly through elected representatives. Both those in favor and those opposed to using tax dollars to pay for the stadiums engaged in a spirited public debate. The Legislature is currently just as vigorously debating ways it can eliminate the budget deficit.

The PUC process, on the other hand, is much more hostile to citizen participation and influence. Indeed, the deck is stacked against the average citizen. Utilities have a virtually unlimited budget to argue their positions — a budget they raise from their ratepayers. Citizens, on the other hand, must raise their own money, and lots of it, to participate effectively.

The rules under which the PUC operates are established by the Legislature. Utility lobbyists are powerful there. But they’re not all-powerful. Thus, over the years, Minnesotans have been able to enact rules to help level the playing field for citizens. For example, the law requires the PUC to reject an application to build a large power plant or a high-voltage transmission line unless the utility proves it is needed to improve reliability or meet increased demand or achieve renewable-energy goals. As part of the application, the utility is expected to thoroughly and completely explore alternatives to its proposal, including no-build options. The burden of proof on whether a project is needed rests with the utilities.

The PUC, regrettably, has interpreted this rule so as to turn it on its head. At the PUC, the burden of proof rests with those opposed to a new power plant or high-voltage transmission line. It is up to the people whose homes and farms may be seized by utilities if a project is approved to make the case for alternatives. Doing so requires an extremely high level of technical expertise. A serious technical and economic examination of alternatives can cost $100,000 to $200,000 or more.

Even if citizens are able to raise that kind of money, they face other hurdles. To analyze alternatives, they must access data that only utilities possess. In many cases, the utilities call that data proprietary and argue that to make the information public is to give a possible advantage to a competitor. One would think that this would be a hard argument to make. After all, Minnesota utilities have a monopoly on the sale of electricity. Apparently, however, it is not a hard argument to make at the PUC.

A formal proceeding, such as a judicial proceeding, involves the cross-examination of witnesses. In many proceedings, utilities again tax their customers by using ratepayer money to acquire a transcript. One would think that since the transcript is in electronic form, the PUC would post it and make it freely available to the public. Astonishingly, the PUC rules state that court reporters own the transcript! Citizens and other intervenors must pay for their own copies of transcripts, which, for controversial projects, could mean $5,000 to $10,000 per copy.

In the recent CapX transmission case, the PUC went one step further in denying citizens. The need for the transmission lines was based in large part on a projection of significantly increasing demand. That projection was largely made in forecasts completed in 2004. It has already proven to be vastly overstated. Moreover, the current economic collapse is translating into shrinking, not growing, electricity demand. Hundreds of citizens asked the PUC to take this new information into account and keep the proceeding open. The PUC decided the current economic free fall doesn’t make a difference.

Utilities are gearing up to ask the PUC to spend billions more for even higher-voltage transmission lines. These will be built to send electricity from the Dakotas to Chicago and New York while running right through Minnesota. If these lines are approved, Minnesotans will probably pay most of the costs, while receiving little if any benefit.

Imagine if legislators proposed taxing us to build a sports stadium in Chicago. The proposal would be dead on arrival. Citizens have influence and even power in the Legislature. The process and rules at the PUC must be redesigned to allow them similar access and influence over energy decisions.

David Morris is vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, based in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.

Whatever is she thinking?  Amy Klobuchar, Senator Amy Klobuchar,  did it again… a STUPID STUPID move… she’s been stumping for coal gasification (STUPID), transmission (STUPID), and now she thinks burning garbage is a good thing (WAY STUPID).

She signed on to a letter to Senators Jeff Bingaman and Lisa Murkowski to include garbage incineration in the definition of “renewable.”

waste-to-energy-letter

Oh, pleeeeeeea-ze…

Waste-to-energy can provide double brenefits: it diminishes waste reserves and produces clean energy while offsetting greenhouse gas emissions.

…

Through the combustion of waste that would have otherwise been landfilled, these facilities decrease our reliance on fossil-fuel fired electric generation.

So, once more with feeling, rattle Amy’s cage and let her know that GARBAGE IS NOT RENEWABLE!  BURNING GARBAGE IS NOT CLEAN ENERGY!  As the MPCA says, BURNING GARBAGE IS MAKING POISON!

USE “EMAIL AMY” FORM - CLICK HERE

or

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