CA solar plant rains on FOX News' parade; goes online with 22MW thanks to DOE loan

[wtmusic]

"NRG Energy and SunPower said this week that California Valley Solar Ranch, which is being helped along by a $1.237 million loan guarantee from the Feds, flipped the switch on the first 22 megawatts of what will eventually be a 250 MW solar PV plant.

Construction on the project started in earnest last fall, soon after the loan deal closed on the very last day before eligibility would lapse. To make the deal happen, NRG on that day completed purchase of the project from SunPower, which stayed on as the project developer, working with the engineering firm Bechtel.

With electrons flowing, NRG seemed eager to note that it might have gotten good financing with the government’s help, but it still needed to follow through by getting the job done and making the project work."

http://theenergycollective.com/namarchetti/136126/more-clean-power-online-damn-loan-program?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Energy+Collective+%28all+posts%29

[Tigress DEM]

1. Second REC on an AWESOME!! thread. California SO needs this!!

All those rolling blackouts from "for profit" energy companies selling their power off right before an anticipated "high need" time so they could buy it back at a higher cost and rip off the consumer in the process.

WISH the electric companies had NEVER been sold to private industry. It USED to be owned by the government so that the money was to keep up the plants, pay employees and keep the infrastructure updated.

[oldhippie]

4. Which California electric companies used to be government owned ...

..... and were sold to private industry? I follow the CA electricity market and history pretty closely and I am not aware of any.

What have I missed?

[Finishline42]

5. Utility divesting of production

Back in the Enron days in the last hours of a CA legislative session a bill was passed that forced CA utility companies to sell off their power plants. It was a time when electricity was selling on the cheap and the idea was the utilities could buy it cheaper on the open market.

Well when they lost the ability to generate electricity suddenly (haha) there were shortages which of course drove prices up. But they were locked in at what they could charge their customers. That is when they went broke and cost CA billions of dollars. Enron traders were laughing all the way to the bank.

A friend was living in San Diego at the time and said that in the peak of summer Enron schedule maintenance on a CA power plant, saying only one of the 3 stacks were generating exhaust. Of course this forced the Utilities into buying peak power from out of state.

[oldhippie]

6. I am still not aware of any govt owned plants sold to private companies ....

Yes, I know about the divesture of generating plants by privately owned utilities during the so-called deregulation. I was a PG&E stockholder at the time and payed close attention. But I know of no government owned utilities (e.g. Sacramento MUD) having to sell anything to privately companies. Government utilities were exempt from the divesture. Do you have a specific example of where I am wrong?

[Tigress DEM]

7. Historical notes

http://www.ppcpdx.org/in-ppHistory.html

http://www.nber.org/chapters/c9986.pdf
8.1 Introduction
The history of public utility regulation in the United States has an odd
circular quality. During the late nineteenth century, gas and electric companies
were subject to limited regulatory oversight; by the early twentieth
century, they were subject to burdensome municipal regulation; and by
1940, most gas and electric companies were subject to state and federal regulation
(Stigler and Friedland 1962; Troesken 1996). Yet during the 1980s
and 1990s, the regulatory bodies that had built up over the previous 100
years were abrogated, and gas and electric companies began operating in
regulatory environments akin to those that had existed in the 1880s and
1890s (Joskow 1989). Similarly, in the American water industry, the governance
regime progressed from private provision with limited municipal
oversight during the nineteenth century to widespread municipal ownership
by the mid-twentieth century (Baker 1897; Troesken 1999). During the
1970s and 1980s, municipally owned water companies were privatized by
the score and returned to the governance regime that had prevailed during
the nineteenth century, with private provision and limited municipal oversight



http://americanhistory.si.edu/powering/past/h1main.htm


<snip>
Municipal Ownership

The big question for progressive reformers was how to gain for society the benefits of natural monopoly without suffering the abuses common among monopolist owners? The answer actually took two forms--municipal ownership and state regulation of companies. By purchasing firms providing essential services and commodities, cities could ensure that the benefits of natural monopoly would flow directly to the people (or so it was hoped). In the electricity supply business, customers would enjoy lower rates as the city-owned utility exploited economies of scale and increased sales to greater numbers of people and businesses. Since cities have no stockholders demanding dividend payments or returns on investment, they could pass on savings directly to their citizens.

<snip>
Public Power for Rural Customers

Keeping his word, Roosevelt created (with the consent of Congress) government agencies that generated and distributed electricity to segments of the American public neglected by investor-owned utilities (IOUs). IOU executives had previously argued that electrifying rural areas would be too expensive and would not provide adequate returns on investment, but the Tennessee Valley Authority (created in 1933) and the Rural Electrification Administration (1935) proved otherwise. These and other institutions demonstrated that electrification of even the poorest households could raise standards of living of the inhabitants and produce good income to electricity suppliers. (In 1930, only 10% of American farms had electrical service; by 1945, almost 45% of them were wired up.) As a result of these actions, investor-owned utilities have been deprived, to this day, of a significant portion of the country's customers--customers who are served by municipal utilities or rural cooperatives.


<snip>
Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935

Beyond embarrassing utility executives with these initiatives, the federal government imposed new rules on the investor-owned utility industry. By passing the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, Congress outlawed the pyramid structure that had been at the core of financial abuses.

[oldhippie]

9. Thanks, good historical insight, but still doesn't address ....

.... my original question of which publicly owned utilities or plants were sold to private entities during the Calif. de-regulation? I'm still not aware of any.

[Tigress DEM]

11. I don't know. I lived there it changed. I was a kid.

Look it up yourself.

[oldhippie]

12. I lived there, too, and I did look it up ....

That was the whole point.

Your statement: "WISH the electric companies had NEVER been sold to private industry. It USED to be owned by the government so that the money was to keep up the plants, pay employees and keep the infrastructure updated." is totally false. No government owned electrical generation or distribution facilites in California were turned over to private industry. Your rant was not based on fact. Just MSU.

[Indydem]

2. Oh the bitter bitter irony.

"working with the engineering firm Bechtel"

War profiteers to "green jobs profiteers."

Always at the government teet.

[ffr]

3. Wind, Solar, & Geothermal

What don't they have in common with Gas, oil, and coal? Oh yea, the former offer virtually unlimited energy, the latter are a dead end.

Not to mention the differences between the two in carbon footprint.

[AverageJoe90]

8. Frickin' awesome.

Shove that in your pipe and smoke it, Chuck & Davey Koch!

Keep the hits coming, man.

[longbow5]

10. nice

good to know that it works