by Bill

PJM Interconnection issued a press release today documenting the dramatic increase in solar generation across the PJM region.

In 2009, the WV Legislature and Gov. Manchin passed the WV Renewable and Alternative Portfolio Standard law to sabotage the development of solar power in WV.  The results are clear.  Here is the map from the PJM press release.  Look at NJ, where incentives are strong and PV installation has been exploding.  Compare NJ's results with WV.  In fact, compare WV with just about any other state in PJM.  Pathetic.

If you are fighting PATH, you should thank our friends in NJ, because they are taking responsibility for their own power generation, insuring that coal by wire transmission lines like PATH can never be built.

Cross posted from The Power Line

by Keryn

The Sierra Club submitted this letter to the WV PSC regarding the Commission's scrutiny of FirstEnergy's decision to close the Albright, Rivesville and Willow Island coal-fired generation plants in West Virginia on September 1, 2012.  Regular readers will remember an earlier post about the meeting Sierra Club mentions in their letter. 

So, what's Sierra Club's purpose here?  A successful transition from economic dependence on coal-fired power plants to a cleaner, more prosperous future for the affected West Virginia communities.  Read Sierra Club's success story about closure of a coal-fired plant in Centralia, Washington, that gave new hope to the community, instead of leaving them high and dry, as FirstEnergy intends to do to the West Virginia communities.   A similar story is playing out in other states affected by FirstEnergy's plant closure plans. 

FirstEnergy's abandonment of these communities that have supported their highly profitable coal-fired generation plants over the years raises the larger question of corporate social responsibility.  Some of these plants date back to the 1920s -- nearly 100 years of profits for FirstEnergy and its predecessors!  It also means nearly 100 years of these communities depending on the economic livelihood these plants have provided.  Now FirstEnergy has made the decision to close these plants during difficult economic times without giving anything back to the communities that have supported them and stoically accepted the pollution of their local environment by these plants in exchange for the good-paying jobs they provided.  To add insult to injury, FirstEnergy points the finger of blame at the EPA, when the reality is that FirstEnergy's closure decision is in their own pecuniary interest.

What social responsibility does FirstEnergy have to these communities?  Sierra Club tried nicely to get FirstEnergy to the table to talk about their responsibility, but was unsuccessful.  Now the WV PSC is dragging them to the table, kicking and screaming all the way.

FirstEnergy talks a big game about their "community involvement"

"Public service is a privilege and our obligation to serve goes beyond providing energy services to our neighbors. In partnership with other businesses, government and the nonprofit sector, we've pledged our resources and the FirstEnergy Foundation to help make our neighborhoods and communities attractive places to live, work and do business."

but when it comes time to put their money where their mouth is, FirstEnergy doesn't deliver.

Perhaps that's because, in reality, FirstEnergy's "corporate stewardship" consists of payments (subsequently recovered from electric ratepayers) to entities like the Maryland Chamber of Commerce ($20,000) for the self-serving purposes of: "Sponsorship related to corporate stewardship and the education of business leaders about PATH (proposed high-voltage transmission line). The Maryland Chamber of Commerce provides PATH with the opportunity to provide educational materials along with personal discussions of the PATH project and issues relating to the project to municipal, county and state elected officials and staff as well as the general public. Corporate monitoring of organizations activities." 

Another example is their $20,000 "membership" in the Westmoreland (PA) Museum, where former Allegheny Energy CEO Paul Evanson sits on the Board of Trustees.  (see Attachment A of this publicly filed document for compete listing of some of FirstEnergy's self-serving "corporate stewardship" in 2010).

FirstEnergy seems to have plenty of money for "corporate stewardship" when it furthers their own interests, but not when it's truly about corporate social responsibility and paying it forward.  How about it, FirstEnergy, can you walk your talk and do the right thing for the communities affected by your plant closures?  According to this article, you're soon going to have an extra $216M to play with as a direct result of these plant closures.  Helping communities affected by your business decision would be a step toward true corporate social responsibility.

by Keryn

CleanTechnica, who prides itself on being "the most-visited clean energy or cleantech news site in the world" that "share[s], and inspire[s] others to share, correct information on cleantech and its dirty competitors (there’s a lot of misinformation out there)," got ironically fished in by one of the biggest energy industry scams in Washington.  Yesterday, they published an analysis of PJM's 2011 State of the Market Report, to show gains in renewables and demand side management, and a drop in coal-fired resources.  While that part of the article could certainly be fairly argued with (and is, by many flat earth cavemen), CleanTechnica loses all credibility when it finishes up by quoting The COMPETE Coalition as a "group of 622 U.S. electricity industry stakeholders advocat[ing] for competitive electricity markets," and refers to one of COMPETE's PR spin opinion pieces as a "report."  So much for "correct information."

The COMPETE scam isn't even that hard to figure out.  The truth is readily available for any reporter who wants to spend a few minutes doing something more than copying & pasting text from a website.

Here's what the COMPETE Coalition is really all about:  It is a corporate-funded lobbying group intended to protect its Board of Director's generation revenue monopolies, including revenue derived from Reliability Must Run (old, dirty, generation) contracts and new coal-by-wire transmission projects.  I'm sure it's perfectly legal to pretend the coalition is a 501(c)6 trade association with a membership that pays "dues," and not an organization whose sole purpose is lobbying for their own financial interests.  The coalition accomplishes this under the guise of supporting competition in electricity markets, which is the exact opposite of their true goal.  While the APPA article linked below has more general information about COMPETE's overall scam, a recent example of coalition chicanery would be COMPETE's deployment of shills to interfere in New Jersey's LCAPP hearings.  COMPETE claims that RMR contracts and transmission lines produce cheaper electric rates than building new, competitive generation in high-priced markets, like New Jersey's.  This isn't true at all.  In the case of new transmission lines, for instance, the cost of the project is subsidized by ratepayers in 13 other states, making New Jersey's cost of new transmission to satisfy load deceptively "cheaper" only through creative accounting.

The COMPETE Coalition fairy tale was deconstructed in the publicly-filed Formal Challenge to Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline's 2010 Transmission Revenue Requirement.  The Challenge (complaint), which was filed by two concerned ratepayers with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in December 2011, had this to say about COMPETE:

"Still other memberships represent costs incurred through participation in lobbying groups that benefit PATH’s parent companies and should be properly classified as lobbying expenses in Account 426.4.
For example, Allegheny Energy’s membership in COMPETE, which was allocated in part to the PATH companies, was explained as a fee for having an Allegheny Energy employee sit on the COMPETE Board of Directors:
“The PATH Companies incurred $200 (PATH-AYE) and $202.50 (PATH-WV) of the total $25,000 paid to COMPETE in 2010. The fees paid were for board member dues. An employee was on the board of directors and paid dues for that privilege.”
However, COMPETE’s website states that “COMPETE membership is free.” It is unclear why Allegheny Energy paid $25,000 for a membership that is “free” and then recovered the amount from ratepayers.
A look at COMPETE’s “leadership” and their 2010 IRS Form 990 shows that COMPETE is managed by individuals from lobbying firms paid to represent the coalition and that the activity of the coalition consists mainly of lobbying activities. The American Public Power Association, a nonprofit, non-partisan, service organization for the nation's more than 2,000 community-owned electric utilities, claims that COMPETE is a disingenuous industry group whose true agenda is to protect the monopoly revenues of their members:
"So, while cloaking themselves in righteous assertions of competition, Compete’s real agenda is to protect the monopoly revenues received by the existing generator members of their group."
It is highly speculative whether Allegheny Energy’s privilege fees paid to COMPETE provide any tangible benefit to ratepayers. The fees are alleged to provide financial benefit to PATH’s parent company by protecting Allegheny Energy’s monopoly revenues through lobbying, therefore this membership should be properly classified in Account 426.4."

The Challenge detailed only a very brief snapshot of COMPETE's scam because COMPETE was merely one example among many instances of alleged Allegheny Energy bookkeeping fraud itemized in the complaint.  Let's expand a bit on the COMPETE fiction, shall we?

COMPETE's publicly-filed 2010 IRS Form 990 is a treasure trove of truth.  Page 7 lists COMPETE's 12-member Board of Directors.  Many of these 12 individuals are Vice Presidents of corporate "Governmental Affairs" (or equivalent) of some of the biggest (and dirtiest) market controlling generators, such as:  Allegheny Energy, FirstEnergy, BP Energy, Direct Energy, PPL, TXU Energy, Constellation, Exelon and PSE&G.  A couple of others represent huge corporations who use a lot of electricity (and likely have discount deals with their generating board compatriots), such as Wal-Mart, Safeway and Leggett & Platt.

COMPETE's total 2010 expenditures were $2,721,092.  Of that amount, $2,571,142 went to only four companies and one individual.  Page 8 details where COMPETE spent the bulk of their cash in 2010:

Wexler & Walker Public Policy, Lobbying Consultant, $677,043
Covington & Burling, Legal Counsel, $570,077
The Nickles Group, Legislative Advisor, $368,494
Federico Pena, Legislative Advisor, $315,000
Fleishman-Hillard, Marketing Consultant, $640,528

Wexler & Walker, Covington & Burling, Nickles Group and Federico Pena are the team who "put laws in place" that are said to stifle competition and protect the monopoly generation revenue of the coalition's "Board of Directors" companies.  Fleishman-Hillard is their public relations spin doctor who perpetuates the charade that the coalition is advocating "competition."  Now, let's look at COMPETE's "Leadership."  The "leadership" is the coalition's public face:  A representative from Wexler & Walker, a representative from Covington & Burling, a representative from The Nickles Group, and Federico Pena -- which is where the bulk of the coalition's money went in 2010.  Like any good corporate front group, the corporations who bankroll the coalition and their real agenda remain "hidden" from public view... except on the coalition's tax filing.  After the coalition was done paying their front men in 2010, there were only $149,950 of other expenditures for the year (page 10).  Out of that total, they spent $50,000 on a "white paper study" so they could slice and dice data and lie with statistics.  That leaves just $92K for other miscellaneous expenses.  I guess that would include the coalition's political contributions such as those listed here.

Page 15 shows that 90%, or more, of COMPETE's "dues" were non-deductible lobbying and political expenditures.  Unfortunately, "Board of Director" company Allegheny Energy decided to practice some creative accounting of their own and recover these lobbying expenses from ratepayers, which is not allowed under FERC's Uniform System of Accounts. The coalition set up Allegheny's big mistake by labeling their self-interested corporate bankrollers as "members."  COMPETE has three different classes of "members" (page 20).  One class (the "free" memberships offered on the website) are simply "allowed to participate" and cannot vote.  These are their shills.  A second class of "members" pay dues as determined by the third class of "members," and are allowed to vote on limited matters (though nothing of great importance), and serve on the Board of Directors.  I will speculate that this class includes the retailers and manufacturers.  The third class of "members" pay "full dues" and includes only certain Board of Directors and "Executive Committee" members, who are the only ones allowed to vote on the important stuff.  I would wager that these "members" are the corporate energy bankrollers whose financial interests are being served by stifling competition in electric generation markets.

I almost wouldn't mind so much that COMPETE is lying to the public, regulators and the media about their true agenda, however, when "member" Allegheny Energy thought they could get away with recovering their $25,000 "membership" from ratepayers (those same ratepayers the Coalition is supposedly benefiting with their advocacy for "competitive markets"), they compounded the scam by stealing the company's self-serving lobbying expenses from consumers.  That truly offends me.

All of this public information is the "correct information" that CleanTechnica neglected to share, and, unfortunately, brings the veracity of all their published content into question.  I will no longer consider CleanTechnica a reliable source.

Who can resist a headline like this:  "FERC to utilities: 'Change or die'"?  The headline comes from a quote of FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff, "The traditional utility is either going to have to change or die."

What he's talking about here is a future where each end-user has the opportunity to be their own mini-utility and save money simply by having access to real-time load and pricing information.  Of course, you can also do that right now by installing your very own power generating system.

Fierce Energy has published a series of articles about what they are dubbing "prosumers" -- consumers who produce their own energy, whether its through installation of their own solar, wind, geothermal or other renewable energy source, or through response to price signals that curtail their energy use to produce "negawatts," which they then sell back to their utility.

Change is hard for investor-owned utilities with a sense of entitlement to bigger and bigger profits at your expense.  The times, they are a-changin'.  But watching them thrash, struggle and die will be entertaining, at least. 

by Bill

Last night, Energy Efficient West Virginia's Cathy Kunkel and Molly McLaughlin and I gave C4RP's and EEWV's fifth Real Solutions to West Virginia's Rising Electric Rates presentation at the Huntington Public Library.  We spent a half hour yesterday afternoon in an engaging conversation with the Huntington Herald-Dispatch's editorial board, and the paper sent a reporter to cover the evening meeting.

Here is a link to the resulting story.  Reporter Lacie Pierson did a pretty good job of covering the main points of the meeting, but she got a little carried away with paraphrasing many of my comments and enclosing the resulting approximations in quotation marks.

At one point in the story, she attributed comments made by an Appalachian Power employee at the meeting to me.  I had just made the point that the fact that 97% of WV's electricity is generated from coal was the reason we could expect rates to continue rising for the foreseeable future.  The power company employee responded by saying that, in his opinion, WV's rising electric rates had been caused by, in the quote Ms. Pierson attributed to me:

"One of the big problems when it comes to rate increases in the state, Howley said, is that it takes more materials to span the power lines throughout the rural, mountainous geography of the state, which is sparsely populated.

The cost of installing and maintaining materials is greater, while the number of customers is smaller than in more urban areas, Howley said. That means when rate increases are ratified, they take a bigger toll on customers."

This is actually a garbled account of what the APCo employee said.  I would certainly never point to WV's geography as the reason for WV's rising electric rates.  Our state's features have been a part of power company experience from the very beginning.  If this were the cause of high electric rates, WV would have had the highest electric rates in the US, instead of some of the lowest, as in the past.

Ms. Pierson did a good job with the rest of her coverage, and we appreciate her reporting on the meeting.  As we pointed out in the meeting, the issues surrounding our electrical system can be complicated.  It is a tough job for a reporter to walk into a discussion like this with little or no background and put out a 100% accurate account of the discussion.

by Keryn

Think more electric rate increases by AEP subsidiary power companies are really unavoidable costs of doing business for AEP?  That's what AEP wants you to think, but it's simply not true.

In addition to AEP's Appalachian Power subsidiary recently playing political games with the West Virginia legislature by killing a good bill requiring the company to do least cost planning, while simultaneously feeding the legislature a line of crap about "avoiding rate increases" with its consumer debt bonds bill, there is also a political and regulatory scam going on just over the border in Kentucky involving their Kentucky Power subsidiary.

In June of 2011, AEP had a huge, public tantrum about new EPA regulations and released plans for closing and converting some of its oldest, dirtiest coal-fired plants, saying that the EPA was causing higher rates, loss of jobs and scary blackouts.

AEP's press release said: 

AEP would retire generating units at the following locations but continue operating some generation at the sites:

Big Sandy Plant, Louisa, Ky. – Units 1 and 2 (1,078 MW) retired by Dec. 31, 2014;
Big Sandy Unit 1 would be rebuilt as a 640-MW natural gas plant by Dec. 31, 2015;

Unless AEP is so completely mismanaged that the company did absolutely no financial analysis before coming up with their list of which plants would close, which ones would be upgraded with scrubbers, and which ones would be converted to gas, we have to assume that repowering Big Sandy Unit 1 to gas was the most economic choice.

However, in December 2011, AEP reversed themselves and decided that spending $1M installing scrubbers at Big Sandy was more economical.  A spokesman detailed the reason for this about-face:

“Kentucky Power looked long and hard at the best way to meet its environmental obligations at Big Sandy Plant and after much study and analysis, the scrubber system emerged as our least-cost option,” said Greg Pauley, president and chief operating officer of Kentucky Power.  “By investing in the plant and the new scrubber system, we will be able to comply with environmental regulations as well as retain local jobs. It will also enable Big Sandy Plant to continue burning millions of tons of coal each year and ensure that Kentucky Power remains a large part of the area’s economy for years to come.”

Oh, so there's the political reason... AEP needs to continue burning lots and lots of coal.  It's not about what's most economical for Kentucky's ratepayers, it's about subsidizing the coal industry.  The scrubber's nearly $1M cost will translate into rate increases of 31%.  Is there a magical economic transformation that happens when you cross a bridge over the Ohio which makes Kentucky's ratepayers able to afford a 30% rate increase that West Virginia's can't?  Appalachian Power's excuse for issuing consumer debt bonds in West Virginia was that their ratepayers couldn't afford another 30% rate increase to pay off APCo's coal debt.  (Hmm... there's that word coal again.)  However, AEP thinks Kentucky's ratepayers have no problem with a 31% coal-subsidy rate increase.

I guess all these contradictions didn't add up for The Sierra Club and EarthJustice, either.  When Kentucky Power filed a rate case to recover the costs of the scrubbers, the organizations hired an expert to look at the company's financial analysis:

Jeremy Fisher, who describes himself as a scientist with Synapse Energy Economics, a research and consulting firm based in Cambridge, Mass., was one of three expert witnesses retained by the Sierra Club to argue against scrubbing smokestack gases at Big Sandy.

"I have found numerous errors, inconsistencies, and flaws within the workbooks supporting the application rendering the application inadequate and incomplete. The application does not support the company's contention that the environmental retrofits at Big Sandy 2 are the least-cost solution for ratepayers," Fisher said in his affidavit.

"In attempting to reconstruct the company's analysis supporting its contention, I have found multiple circumstances where specific errors or flaws in the analysis or underlying assumptions have biased the results towards favoring the retrofits. Correcting these sometimes simple errors leads to the conclusion that retrofitting Big Sandy 2 is, by a fairly wide margin, the least economical choice for Kentucky Power Co.'s ratepayers."

So the next time the power company tells you that raising rates is unavoidable, check their math... and their politics.

Take a look at this story on The Daily Beast blog at Newsweek's Web site.

In 2008, 33,500 rooftop solar systems were installed in the United States, a 63 percent increase over the amount of capacity installed in 2007. In California, the solar capital of country, the increase was 95 percent.

Meanwhile, the outlook for the other side of the solar industry—the large, centralized power plants—isn't so sunny. These megaprojects—think acres of desert landscape covered in thousands of solar panels sending electricity through transmission lines—controlled mostly by utility companies that have had a monopoly over the country’s electricity grid since the turn of the last century, were supposed to be the key to the future of the solar industry. So far, they're getting vastly outpaced by the decentralized rooftop approach. According to the Interstate Renewable Energy Council's 2006-08 count, consumers added 522 megawatts to the grid; whereas utility generated sites added just 96 megawatts.

Are power companies making an extra effort to increase investment in solar to catch up with homeowners and distributed generation?  No.

The disparity has utilities worried about losing their grip on the country's energy industry, and the $130 billion residential electricity market. In some cases, utilities are actually taking direct steps to thwart rooftop solar. Two weeks ago in Colorado, the state's biggest utility, Xcel, tried passing a surcharge on homes and businesses using rooftop solar power. The public went ballistic, and with pressure from Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter, the proposal was eventually shelved. In early July, New Mexico's biggest utility, PNM, filed an official request to dramatically reduce incentives for businesses and homeowners to install solar panels, and is now fighting with state lawmakers over whether it has the right to exclusively own solar panels systems hooked up to its grid.

So far, all of the innovation in solar power in the US has come from homeowners, small businesses that install solar generating equipment, and local innovators.  The media lead us to believe that business innovation involves some whizbang technology.  It doesn't.  Business innovation is almost always figuring out how to get the best products into the hands of the most people.

Right now, some of the most advanced business innovation in solar power is coming out of the People's Chapel in Philippi, WV.  Here's the story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  Ruston Seaman and John Prusa have created a charitable business called New Vision that puts solar power in the hands of local people for a fraction of the cost of a manufactured, turnkey system.  They use innovative labor credits and partial assembly of PV panels to make their products available to nearly everyone.

Here is real business innovation that cannot be matched by power companies operating our obsolete, centralized grid:

Families who receive solar panels pay for them with two currencies: money and time.

One home can cost between $7,000 to $10,000 to outfit, with trees to clear and supplies to buy. Families pay for the panels with some of the savings they start to see on their electric bills each month. The money goes into a general community fund that finances more solar panels on more homes.

"Once 10 families start paying back, there's enough for Family Eleven," said Mr. Seaman.

Ten families are already slated to receive the panels, and already nine mission trips are planned this summer for groups from Pennsylvania and West Virginia to come and help install more.

In addition to those upfront expenses, outfitting a home also takes manpower; Mr. Seaman calls it Philippi's version of Amish barn building.

To pay back their neighbors for their time, families must volunteer by either installing solar panels somewhere else or putting in community time at the church.

Mr. Prusa printed "dollar bills" that are exchanged as currency for the volunteer hours.

Here is the closing comment from a solar installer in the Daily Beast story:

"We're buying panels at prices I didn't think we'd see for at least another decade," says John Berger, founder of Standard Renewable Energy, a Texas-based company that provides homeowners and businesses ways to reduce their energy costs, including on-site solar generation. Berger expects to have revenues of $50 million in 2009, this after doing $11 million in business last year, and only $1.5 million in 2007. He gets particularly agitated when talking about the utilities. "When solar came along, they thought they could ignore it. Then they thought they could just monopolize it. But the private sector is giving them competition, and now they're scared."

Power companies should worry even more now that innovators like New Visions are in the solar power game.

Largely as a result of protests lodged by Ohio business owners, the Ohio Public Utilities Commission rejected AEP's latest 40% rate increase plan, and rolled Ohio rates back to December 2011 levels.  Keryn picked up this great link in a post she did yesterday on the threat to jobs of WV's rising electric rates.

Here is the link to the Columbus Dispatch article on the PUCO rate roll back.  PUCO and AEP have been in a back and forth discussion of the company's rate increases for several months.  PUCO had given preliminary approval to AEP's 40% rate increase, but yesterday, the Utilities Commission just said no to AEP's plan.  Here's why:

Board members said they were not aware that the plan would lead to such dramatic increases for certain types of customers. Among the hardest hit were small businesses, churches, schools and all-electric houses, who say their overall electricity costs rise by 40 percent in some cases.

And:

The Dispatch reported before the rates were approved in December that small businesses were facing substantial increases. The story included internal emails from a top PUCO staff member who warned that the rates were not fair and would outrage customers.

PUCO initially approved AEP's radical rate increases until Ohio's rate payers, primarily small business owners and workers, expressed their "outrage" over AEP's arrogance and PUCO's failure to protect Ohio jobs.

Small-business owners are applauding the decision.

“We’re glad that, as a collective of small businesses, the commission has heard us,” said Chad McCoury, owner of J. Gumbo’s restaurant Downtown.

Protest over the rates was led by small business owners and workers, who were responsible for about 40 percent of the 1,018 complaints the PUCO had received as of yesterday.

PUCO initially didn't want to take this step to prevent job loss in Ohio.  Only quick and angry protests by active citizens and business people forced PUCO to stop the outrageous rate increase.  To give PUCO credit, they voted unanimously to stop AEP.

And if you don't think clear and forceful action by regulators doesn't make a difference to power companies, here is the money quote from the Dispatch story:

The company’s [AEP's] shares were down 4 percent in afternoon trading.

Ouch.

cross posted from The Power Line

by Bill

We made progress yesterday and this morning.

Yesterday, the House Finance Committee passed a committee substitute for HB4530 which restricts the bubble bond bailout of APCo only to APCo’s existing coal-created debt.

This morning, Keryn’s op ed piece detailing obstruction of the least cost planning bill, SB162, by AEP and FirstEnergy lobbyists ran in the Gazette.  Remember that the Gazette link will die after a week.

by Bill

APCo has gotten themselves (and WV rate payers) in a mess.  They want to try a new financing scheme, HB4530, to bail them out.  The mess was caused by rising fuel costs.

As long as electric power generation depends on burning something, electric rate payers will be paying for fuel.  The other thing we know about fuel is that world supply gets smaller and smaller every year, and demand for fuel rises every year around the world.  From these two trends, we can safely conclude that the price of fuels used to produce electricity will continue to rise, as they have been doing for decades now.

There are three ways of "producing" electricity that don't involve burning fuel.

1. We can increase the efficiency of our use of electricity.  That is, we can invest in equipment and systems that produce more "work" for the same amount of electricity.
2. We can conserve electricity more effectively by simply being wiser about how we use power.
3. We can eliminate the need for fuel altogether by investing in solar power and wind power.

Items 1 and 2 above don't involve producing any new electricity at all.  Electrical engineers who have studied efficiency savings have concluded that 13% of our current electrical use can be eliminated easily from our current systems just through the easiest efficiency improvements.  Conservation is different from efficiency, because it simply means using less electricity by installing automatic switches on electrical lighting and equipment.  Conservation can be as simple as getting in the habit of waiting to use your washing machine until you have a full load, or turning off lights in rooms you are not using.

Investing in efficiency and renewable power, such as solar panels or wind turbines, does not require any fuel costs.  All of the investment in these systems, however, comes as an initial payment for installation of equipment that will last 30 years or more.  It is that initial investment that is the big hurdle for government regulators and politicians.

As we have seen, our WV PSC and our WV Legislature are more willing to lock WV rate payers in to rising fuel costs than they are to support real investments in efficiency and renewable power generation that will eliminate fuel costs altogether.

Why is it that the WV Legislature is rushing to force rate payers to borrow money to pay for coal that has already been burned?   Why won't the legislators and the WV PSC consider using a feed in tariff system or state bonding authority to support WV owned and installed renewable power systems that would eliminate the need for fuel cost adjustments forever?

I personally don't have a dog in the fight over the APCo bailout bill.  I am a Mon Power customer.  Mon Power, just as dependent on coal as APCo is, managed to do just fine during the 2008 coal price bubble, and avoided APCo's big boo boo.

I hold the WV Legislature and the WV PSC accountable for failing on the larger question of diversifying WV's sources of electricity.  Back in 2009, the Legislature had the opportunity to pass a renewable energy credit system which would have helped WV citizens and businesses make the initial investment in solar power generating systems.  This bill would also have created dozens of new businesses in the state, created new jobs and increased property tax revenues for schools and counties.  Instead, then Governor Joe Manchin and the Legislature passed a bill that shut new solar power investors out of any benefits and locked up the "alternative energy credit" system exclusively for coal burning power companies.  So the WV Legislature and now Senator Manchin are directly responsible for failing to resove problems that have led to the current APCo coal mess.

The Legislature has a chance during this legislative session to move our state in the right direction, toward a more stable energy future.  Legislators can pass the following bills that are before them right now:

• SB 162/HB 4646 to create a least cost plan reporting system at the PSC
• HB 4363 requiring the PSC to set energy efficiency targets for power companies in WV
• HB 2740 the Solar Bill of Rights to limit local restrictions on installing solar panels