Electrical Power
Friday, August 25, 2017
Deregulate public utilities?
Some conservative politicians, especially Libertarians, have called for the deregulation of all public utilities. Is this a good idea? This was first called for (in my experience) during the Reagan administration. Liberals said it was a bad idea: public utilities like power, water, and telephones should be granted monopolies, in the interest of efficiency, they said. Conservatives stated just the opposite: if market forces are eliminated, the result is always less efficiency and higher prices. Who to believe?
Even Ronald Reagan was not able to deregulate water and power, and in most of the U.S. they remain government-sponsored monopolies to this day. Only phone service was deregulated. Most of my readers likely cannot remember a time when there was just ONE phone company, but I am old enough to remember. The continental United States was divided into four regions, and in each region, one company provided telephone service. No exceptions. Dire predictions were made by the phone company and their friends in Washington about what would happen. Prices would go up, quality would go down, and phones of one company would not be able to talk to phones of any other company. Did this happen?
Here’s a recent example of my interactions with a public monopoly (Rocky Mountain Power) and a deregulated, non-monopoly.
I applied for power connection for a cabin I am building in rural Utah. An estimator came out a few weeks later, looked over my situation, and gave me a verbal estimate: “about ten thousand dollars.” He explained that the two power poles on my property did not have transformers, and that they could not put a transformer on either pole, as they are thirty-foot poles, and company regulations specify that transformers require forty-five-foot poles. So, one of the perfectly good poles on my land would have to be pulled out and replaced with another one half-again as tall, so they could put a transformer on it. Of course, the wires would no longer reach, and would have to be replaced, as they also are not permitted to splice the wires.
I thought this was outrageous, so I threw several fits, finally persuading the company to send a different estimator. There was no other in the area, so they had to pull one in from another area. He came out a couple of weeks later, immediately noticed that there is a forty-five foot pole with a transformer on it, across the street from my land, and less than 200 feet from my house. When I asked him why the first estimator didn’t see it, he replied, “Tunnel vision.” He left, after telling me that his estimate would be a lot less than ten thousand dollars, but I couldn’t get him to name a figure. He said it would be in the mail soon. Several weeks went by.
Meanwhile, the written estimate from the first estimator arrived in the mail. It came with three copies of a contract for me to sign. A cover letter explained that, upon receiving my certified check for $10,040.00, and all three copies of the contract signed by me in blue ink, I would receive a detailed plan telling me what the company would do for the ten thousand bucks. In other words, they wanted me to send them ten thousand dollars before they would even tell me what I would get for my money! They promised that they would then begin work “within a few weeks.” I started looking up solar power companies.
The next day, we had a visit from the telephone installer of Centra-com, the local phone company. Their phone company “pedestal” is located right next to the power pole that the Rocky Mountain Power estimator wanted to replace. The phone man gave us a contract to sign, ran the wire to our trailer, helped us install our phone, all in the same morning. Total charges: $26.00.
But that’s not the end of the story.
Five weeks went by. Finally, we received the written estimate from Rocky Mountain Power’s second estimator. Three thousand dollars. However, we would be responsible for putting a three-inch pipe under the street to our property, which means we’d need to get the county’s permission to dig a three-foot deep trench across a public road, re-routing traffic, bedding the pipe in six inches of gravel, finding someone to haul at least two truckloads of gravel, finding someone else to lay the gravel in the trench, then closing the trench and repairing the road, and buying and mouning the metal conduit from the ground up to the top of a five-story high pole, installing a meter box on our property, then connecting the meter box to our house, a hundred and fifty feet away, all according to their regulations and the county codes.
We checked with an electrical contractor, the brother of our next-door neighbor. He says to expect to pay at least six thousand dollars before we ever see any electricity. And that this is NORMAL. So what do we get for our money? Just the ability to buy electricity from Rocky Mountain Power. We don’t own the pole, the conduit, the pipe, the wire, or even the meter, even though we have to pay for all of them. Even though we are legally responsible for their correct and legal installation. For three thousand dollars, they will pull their wire (bought by us) through their pipe and conduit (bought and installed by us) and attach it to their meter (paid for by us) and their transformer. And they won’t connect it to our house! It has already taken two months, and will likely take two more before we can actually get connected and begin using electricity.
Compare this to Centra-Com, the phone company, who signed us up, ran their wire from their pedestal around our construction site to our trailer, and hooked it up to our phone, all on the same morning. Makes me a believer in deregulation of public utility monopolies.
Even Ronald Reagan was not able to deregulate water and power, and in most of the U.S. they remain government-sponsored monopolies to this day. Only phone service was deregulated. Most of my readers likely cannot remember a time when there was just ONE phone company, but I am old enough to remember. The continental United States was divided into four regions, and in each region, one company provided telephone service. No exceptions. Dire predictions were made by the phone company and their friends in Washington about what would happen. Prices would go up, quality would go down, and phones of one company would not be able to talk to phones of any other company. Did this happen?
Here’s a recent example of my interactions with a public monopoly (Rocky Mountain Power) and a deregulated, non-monopoly.
I applied for power connection for a cabin I am building in rural Utah. An estimator came out a few weeks later, looked over my situation, and gave me a verbal estimate: “about ten thousand dollars.” He explained that the two power poles on my property did not have transformers, and that they could not put a transformer on either pole, as they are thirty-foot poles, and company regulations specify that transformers require forty-five-foot poles. So, one of the perfectly good poles on my land would have to be pulled out and replaced with another one half-again as tall, so they could put a transformer on it. Of course, the wires would no longer reach, and would have to be replaced, as they also are not permitted to splice the wires.
I thought this was outrageous, so I threw several fits, finally persuading the company to send a different estimator. There was no other in the area, so they had to pull one in from another area. He came out a couple of weeks later, immediately noticed that there is a forty-five foot pole with a transformer on it, across the street from my land, and less than 200 feet from my house. When I asked him why the first estimator didn’t see it, he replied, “Tunnel vision.” He left, after telling me that his estimate would be a lot less than ten thousand dollars, but I couldn’t get him to name a figure. He said it would be in the mail soon. Several weeks went by.
Meanwhile, the written estimate from the first estimator arrived in the mail. It came with three copies of a contract for me to sign. A cover letter explained that, upon receiving my certified check for $10,040.00, and all three copies of the contract signed by me in blue ink, I would receive a detailed plan telling me what the company would do for the ten thousand bucks. In other words, they wanted me to send them ten thousand dollars before they would even tell me what I would get for my money! They promised that they would then begin work “within a few weeks.” I started looking up solar power companies.
The next day, we had a visit from the telephone installer of Centra-com, the local phone company. Their phone company “pedestal” is located right next to the power pole that the Rocky Mountain Power estimator wanted to replace. The phone man gave us a contract to sign, ran the wire to our trailer, helped us install our phone, all in the same morning. Total charges: $26.00.
But that’s not the end of the story.
Five weeks went by. Finally, we received the written estimate from Rocky Mountain Power’s second estimator. Three thousand dollars. However, we would be responsible for putting a three-inch pipe under the street to our property, which means we’d need to get the county’s permission to dig a three-foot deep trench across a public road, re-routing traffic, bedding the pipe in six inches of gravel, finding someone to haul at least two truckloads of gravel, finding someone else to lay the gravel in the trench, then closing the trench and repairing the road, and buying and mouning the metal conduit from the ground up to the top of a five-story high pole, installing a meter box on our property, then connecting the meter box to our house, a hundred and fifty feet away, all according to their regulations and the county codes.
We checked with an electrical contractor, the brother of our next-door neighbor. He says to expect to pay at least six thousand dollars before we ever see any electricity. And that this is NORMAL. So what do we get for our money? Just the ability to buy electricity from Rocky Mountain Power. We don’t own the pole, the conduit, the pipe, the wire, or even the meter, even though we have to pay for all of them. Even though we are legally responsible for their correct and legal installation. For three thousand dollars, they will pull their wire (bought by us) through their pipe and conduit (bought and installed by us) and attach it to their meter (paid for by us) and their transformer. And they won’t connect it to our house! It has already taken two months, and will likely take two more before we can actually get connected and begin using electricity.
Compare this to Centra-Com, the phone company, who signed us up, ran their wire from their pedestal around our construction site to our trailer, and hooked it up to our phone, all on the same morning. Makes me a believer in deregulation of public utility monopolies.
The above was written by Don. In the meantime, we have minimal electricity. We have three very old solar panels. They will run our computer, internet, a sewing machine. They will not run a blender or an iron. It is possible to empty out the battery if we run them seveal days in a row. That is not running all day--a few hours in the morning and sometimes a few hours in the evening
We have, basically, three sources of electricity--each with their drawback.
Our second source is the Yeti. It is a power source--basically a battery. It has two plug-ins and four USB ports. It can be charged off the generator or by being plugged into a regular electrical source so it visits our neighbor periodically. Because it needs to be charged, it is also turned off when not in use.
Our third source of electricity is the generator. It runs the electric drill, elecctric saw, and simultaneously charges the Yeti when in use.
Of course, the generator needs gas to run. It takes $26 to fill two five gallon gas cans which we do once a week or so (Eureka prices). Don was pretty proud when he got five gallons on the dot. This was at a gas station on Pioneer Crossing and it was less expensive than Eureka.
Our third source of electricity is the generator. It runs the electric drill, elecctric saw, and simultaneously charges the Yeti when in use.
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