Has Retail Choice Delivered on its Promises?
Participation rates, customers’ bills, meaningful choice
Retail choice might have reduced retail electricity prices if it allowed customers to escape stranded costs, but that didn’t happen.
Customer Engagement
The Powerwall Follies
A year later, reality is kicking in.
One year after Elon Musk rolled out the Powerwall: The real price is 60 to 80 percent more than Musk claimed. A handful (yes, I mean about five) have actually been installed in Germany and Australia. None in the U.S. so far.
A Five-Point Plan For The Next Wave Of Electricity Restructuring
The monopoly utility model was once expansive and revolutionary. Now, it is contracting and preservationist.
A plan for restructuring: Delivery service pricing reform; devolution of generation and re-allocating risk; stranded cost recovery; distributed resources neutrality; optimization of service offerings.
Consumers Want What?
Rather than accept the rhetoric, let’s find out.
What’s missing is asking consumers to consider realistic tradeoffs between two characteristics of electricity rather than the desirability of a single characteristic in isolation.
No Consumer Advocates! 50 Years Ago
PUF editorial in 1966 shows what a dramatically different culture it was then.
Check out this editorial from 50 years ago, in the April 14, 1966 issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly. In this criticism of the notion of a utility consumer advocate, the rhetoric reveals a gigantic gulf between American society of then and of now.
Illicit Marketing Practices
State PUCs take aim at unscrupulous electric and gas suppliers.
We’ll cover state PUC rulings from New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio, dealing with 1) billing overcharges, 2) deceptive promises of savings, 3) faulty enrollment practices, 4) “slamming,” 5) misleading sales scripts used in telemarketing, 6) hidden fixed charges, and 7) concealed pass-through clauses.
Today's NASUCA
To ensure reliable and affordable service remains a primary focus.
NASUCA continues to bring the consumer advocate message to Washington D.C. Most recently it filed a letter in opposition to a U.S. Senate energy bill (S. 2012) amendment, King-Reid #3120. The letter voiced concerns about a move to federally institutionalize full net metering.
Musk and Me
I signed up for a free quote on line.
With all the talk of the “existential threat” to traditional utilities from solar and other disruptive technologies (and the blowback against net metering in various states), I thought I’d check out SolarCity first hand.
Action by Choice
Time-varying rates is an effective way to satisfy customer demands.
In the 21st century economy pivoted on customer choice, opt-in is the path to tread in the provision of time varying rates to electricity customers.
Georgia: On Becoming a Social Media Junkie
2015 Regulators Forum
Being in the “energy” business as a commissioner, staff, lobbyist or industry leader is hard enough without social media, right? When you add Twitter and Facebook to the mix, it is enough to drive one crazy. Who needs it? Well, we all do, really.