Ed. Note: The author has been in the trenches as a consumer and free market advocate against the monopoly utilities in natural gas and particularly electricity. His “bottom lines” follow.
“It is time to end this marriage of vested privilege and authoritarian ideology and abolish the monopoly-regulator system.”
There is no such thing as a natural monopoly; government creates all monopolies. There was never any real justification for the regulation of the utility business. The existence of utility regulation is a triumph of political entrepreneurship by the incumbent utility companies to use the power of state government to gain dominance over their customers, to eliminate their more efficient competitors and to obtain recovery on their bad investments.
The system of politicized energy distribution consumes more resources than necessary to provide service. …
“While limited, customer choice and utility switching in Georgia has a large impact on the utility behavior and regulatory policies. Because of options, utilities try to treat customers like, well, customers. But it is time to promote markets in place of remaining governmental mandates and controls.”
The prevailing goals sought by those seeking reform in the power market are mandated access and common carriage for state regulated utilities. However, this alternative is at odds with unleashing entrepreneurship in this power market. The far better development would be the spontaneous, voluntary, indigenous, bottom-up approach for the development of market relationships rather than government mandates.
The state of Georgia has a system that is near such a market. With a few changes, a truly liberalized market is possible. The ninety different utilities in the state share the high voltage system in common.…
Ed. Note: The following filing with the Georgia Public Service Commission by Jim Clarkson and Resource Supply Management is reprinted below. In the Matter of: Docket No. 29849 Georgia Power Company’s Twenty Fourth Construction Monitoring Report for Plant Vogtle Units 3 & 4)
It has been clear for some time this Commission will support substantial rate increases for Georgia Power. Over the next two years it is estimated that the Company will seek about a $1 billion in new revenue with even more to follow as the Vogtle unit 4 comes online.
Now that the first case of Vogtle recovery of capital and associated costs has begun, we offer our advice which has been ignored during the construction cases. There are ways to provide to least some relief to ratepayers.…