pay as you go hydro - Page 3

MacNutt · Nov 7th, 2003, 02:12 PM

Agreed macdoc...decentralised/site specific/efficient and CLEAN power facilities are very much the way of the future. No argument.

BUT...in order to foster the building of many hundreds of smaller independant power generators (using all sorts of different technologies) you will FIRST have to de-regulate the whole industry and end the monopolies (think of the big phone companies of yesteryear compared with what we have today). The artificially low and heavily subsidised electric bills we now have will not encourage anything smaller than a Provincial government to build anything useful.

And even THEY aren't building anything these days.

If you allow the price of the end product...electricity in this case...to reflect the ACTUAL cost of producing it then you will have lots of small towns and independant operators springing up all over the place.

If you don't...then they will avoid it as an unworkable and unsustainable money pit. And we already have enough of those.

So here's a suggestion:

Open up the electrical industry to anyone who can provide it. Make sure that the facility is extremely low impact and don't allow a licence for any that don't conform to strict regulations. Allow any operator that is licenced to provide power to use the existing power grid for a fee. The government retains ownership of the grid and makes money to maintain it from these fees. (it could also lock out any rogue operations by shutting them out of the grid).

Pretty soon, we'd have a whole bunch of different producers competing to provide better service and cheaper rates to their customers...and fighting for market share.

Gosh...sounds like good old free-market forces at work doesn't it?

And both Gordon Campbell and Ralph Klein have been on this particular bandwagon for some time. It's coming very soon.

It seems to me that Mike Harris was heading in this direction before he got booed off the public stage by the vested interests (Big Unions) who stood to lose the most from a non-monopolistic and diversified power system.

(Some very fat-cat jobs are at stake here...and they aint about to go quietly into that good night.)

So...yep...diversity is the answer. Small site-specific generators are the future.

But don't wait for the government to set them up. It's just not happening.

Again...time to bite the bullet and make some very tough decisions. Do it soon.

Or buy lots of candles.

MacDoc · Nov 7th, 2003, 08:47 PM

It's already been decapped and the Tories have ZERO cred. De-reg has been completely useless - private just rips off with existing plants and builds absolutely nothing and lets the transmission lines degrade.
Why not the less there is the more they make with fewer facilities.

It will be a combination of using existing facilities, increasing prices to both fund maintenance and provide incentives via tax breaks and low cost extended time loans.
Leadership not politcal dogma.
NGOs, local facilities like Hazel's own Mississauga Hydro and innovative builders like the Dutch and the industrialists mentioned above - underlying security with incentive for creativity.
Not an easy path to walk but it WILL be walked.

Hydro has to be forced to pay for excess produced by small suppliers - that's one area that clearly needs to be addressed.

When hydro has to start to compete with the dispersed guys and the smaller guys get the long term financing needed to make it work THEN we'll see choice.

Bring on the Green Power bonds - backed by the government and specific to dispersed power.

I actually wrote a note to Mcguinty suggesting a baseline pricing for power that covered everyone for the first bit of "must have" hydro then scaling up quickly.
This covers off lower income users who are conscientious and also the misers among us who like a deal

The profligate - like me - pay and pay and pay.....but even this Mac overloaded household gets energy conscious when the rates jump.

There are some amazing technologies coming both for conservation and production. We just have to manage change fairly and with intelligence.