Business

Some comments on business news today

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed SB 1456 allowing Utilities in Oklahoma to request to add a surcharge to utility bills for customers who opt for Distributed Generation like rooftop solar panels, local generators, or even personal wind turbines. 

In a society where we continually wrestle with the environmental and geopolitical impacts of our current energy strategy -- Hydraulic Fracturing, Air & Water Pollution from Coal and Oil, Fukushima recovery, Climate Change, Foreign Oil, the Oil Sands extraction drama -- and the high costs of changing course -- lost jobs, higher prices, shareholder returns -- why would we burden a promising yet nascent alternative approach to energy with an additional cost just as it has become economical enough to attain market success? It's one step forward and two steps back. 

I understand the utilities need to update their transmission and other facilities to deal with DG and net metering and all the associated complexities. I understand that the economics of their original rate cases didn't account for Distributed Generation so they need to make up for that, but even in the monopolistic, hyper-regulated world of the utilities industry, at some point regulators and politicians need to stop overtly obstructing innovation in favor of protecting the IOU shareholders. 

Darwinian economics must take over at some point, and giving the utilities a way to generate revenue from someone else's product that customers purchase specifically to avoid sending money to the utility in the first place is just plain backwards and defeats the principles of a market economy. 

SB 1456 effectively states that if you as a customer find a way to save $20/month on your electric bill through DG, then we are going to have you pay some of that savings back to the electric utility because they didn't plan for the possibility that you might not use enough of their electricity. What's next, charging customers for turning off their lights?