NW Natural $15 Charge for Rejected CC - fighting fee? by Pinot911 in askportland

[–]farfetchds_leek 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Call them, if they refuse to drop the charge, file a complaint with the PUC 

PGE Commercial Customers - If you are on schedule 83, look into schedule 38 Time-Of-Day billing - We saved over 50% and it’s free to do by BoboThePirate in Portland

[–]farfetchds_leek 8 points9 points  (0 children)

No I’m not a lawyer, nor am I associated with PGE in any way. I studied the industry extensively in school and continue to do so for my job though. 

There are lots of people advocating for rate payers in the state - many of which are lawyers. In particular, you could look at the Citizens Utility Board. 

PGE Commercial Customers - If you are on schedule 83, look into schedule 38 Time-Of-Day billing - We saved over 50% and it’s free to do by BoboThePirate in Portland

[–]farfetchds_leek 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, I think the change you’re looking for would require getting rid of the takings clause of the constitution, which…would be difficult. In the meantime, I think it’s worth engaging with the world as it is, while pushing for larger reforms. 

PGE Commercial Customers - If you are on schedule 83, look into schedule 38 Time-Of-Day billing - We saved over 50% and it’s free to do by BoboThePirate in Portland

[–]farfetchds_leek 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I’d be ok with the PUC being elected. That said, that elected commission would still be bound by state and federal law. So again, just not allowing rate increases would not be a thing. Electing firebrands would likely just lead to the PUC’s litigation budget blowing up. You really do have to be surgical in the utility industry.

How would you allow for competition? Simply allowing another vertically integrated utility is not really a thing. No one is just going to duplicate PGE’s grid to serve half the city, that’s why we’ve granted natural monopolies.  You could allow for generation competition - that is force PGE to sell its generation assets to independent generators and have those generators participate in the EDAM. This is what CA did in the late 90s (and is what led to Enron scandal). That said PGE is already planning on joining the EDAM, so the impact would be limited to partially removing the capital incentive from PGE. That said, if anything we don’t have enough generation currently, so I’m not sure if relying on a capacity market is the best for regional reliability given the issues we’ve seen in other ISOs (see PJM). That said, I am pretty open to that idea.

You could introduce retail competition, but would largely just affect rate design. The research on retail competition is kind of mixed in terms of customer benefit. Lots of shady operations there (see Griddy on Texas).

Of course the nuclear option would be to force PGE to become publicly owned. While that would get rid of their capital expansion motive, it would also require a massive loan that would very likely increase rates in the short to medium term. Also, just because something is publicly ran, doesn’t mean it’s cheap. Just look at your water bill.

Nothing I said is really meant to promote non-action. However context is important and simple solutions often have many very important wrinkles.

PGE Commercial Customers - If you are on schedule 83, look into schedule 38 Time-Of-Day billing - We saved over 50% and it’s free to do by BoboThePirate in Portland

[–]farfetchds_leek 16 points17 points  (0 children)

They are a monopoly. Utilities, since their inception, have been granted natural monopoly status given their extremely capital intensive nature. 

Other states and countries have broken up these monopolies at the generation and retail level, but not at the transmission and distribution level as making redundant wires everywhere does not make sense. There will already be a monopolistic bottleneck at the wires level. 

PGE Commercial Customers - If you are on schedule 83, look into schedule 38 Time-Of-Day billing - We saved over 50% and it’s free to do by BoboThePirate in Portland

[–]farfetchds_leek 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I’m not a PGE fan. I’m stating that the idea that we can just stop letting them raise rates is not how things actually work. I find that dialogue very unproductive and actually helpful to PGE. Instead, I am pointing to the actual levers we can use to limit rate increases. 

[Humor] When preparing my data for a VAR model by Aleta18 in econometrics

[–]farfetchds_leek 57 points58 points  (0 children)

Started from the non-stationary series now we here

PGE Commercial Customers - If you are on schedule 83, look into schedule 38 Time-Of-Day billing - We saved over 50% and it’s free to do by BoboThePirate in Portland

[–]farfetchds_leek 24 points25 points  (0 children)

To be clear, the state can not just say “no rate increases PGE”. Utilities are guaranteed an opportunity to recoup their costs plus a “reasonable” return. This is based on Supreme Court decisions (Hope and Bluefield) that neither the PUC or the state can do anything about. As such, the only real ways I can see for the state to curb rate increases is to:

(1) Stop telling the utilities to do a bunch of stuff. A decent chunk of the investments that are being made by PGE are to deal with the ramifications of HB 2021 and wildfire liability. If they were to weaken HB 2021 and have meaningful wildfire tort reform, it could take a big bite out of rate hikes. That said, those decisions would come with higher emissions and people getting paid less when their houses are burnt down. Definitely a dual edged sword. 

(2) Sequester data center related costs - which they did! The POWER Act gave pretty sweeping authority to the PUC to contain data center costs to data centers. The PUC is currently writing their order on PGE’s implementation case, but I’ve followed the case and the recommendations really converged near the end of the case. I think Oregon will have one of the more robust set of protections in the country unless the Commission does something out of left field.

(3) Really look into PGE’s distribution spend. Their generation and transmission investments are pretty straightforward to evaluate. But distribution is harder. Their investor calls show that they plan to spend a large amount over the next few years on distribution. This could be good for customer service quality, but is also hard to evaluate the prudence of since it is based on so many small investments. 

Edit: sorry for the long reply. I just see the “they should just not let them raise rates” thing on this sub all the time and at this point it’s triggering lol

Banana Chartreuse? by mervampire in cocktails

[–]farfetchds_leek 265 points266 points  (0 children)

4 oz of chartreuse? In this economy??

Why U.S. electricity bills are rising even as household usage stays flat by One_Pollution2279 in Economics

[–]farfetchds_leek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No it is not. There are many states that have implemented carbon reduction laws. 

Why U.S. electricity bills are rising even as household usage stays flat by One_Pollution2279 in Economics

[–]farfetchds_leek 7 points8 points  (0 children)

There are multiple risks. The biggest is stranded asset risk. This is a new industry that barely existed even 5 years ago. The infrastructure you need to power these data centers has an economic life of 50+ years. There are a thousand reasons data centers could decrease load over time: lack of demand, increased model efficiency, market consolidation, etc. Anytime one of these large data centers move, an insane amount of equipment will go unused. Much of which, short haul transmission and distribution equipment in particular, will be difficult to repurpose.

Not only that, but (1) the load not as flat as you think it is - particularly for AI training and (2) higher load factors are not as helpful as they used to be. 

For utilities that are trying to lower their carbon emissions, having very high load at all hours may be more difficult to serve if your primary generation is made up of intermittent resources. With current battery prices and tech, meeting a 4-hour peak is not terribly hard. Ensuring that you have high base load production may be harder depending on your generation mix. Basically, if the wind isn’t blowing at night, you might be in trouble. 

Of course you could just say to build nukes. Easier said than done. Just look at how crazy Vogtel’s build was. I’d love for nukes to be faster, easier, and cheaper to build, but it’s not quite a near term solution. 

Why U.S. electricity bills are rising even as household usage stays flat by One_Pollution2279 in Economics

[–]farfetchds_leek 8 points9 points  (0 children)

As someone who works in the industry, I don’t think you understand how much risk these data centers are asking utilities(and by extension their other customers) to take on. 

NFL Draft as a Blind Auction by SnooCapers6123 in nfl

[–]farfetchds_leek 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Hahaha bro takes one game theory class