Should FERC rewrite rules or let states make reforms?
Bruce Radford is executive editor of Public Utilities Fortnightly. Contact him at radford@fortnightly.com.
Idaho has a problem with PURPA. So does North Carolina, and other states in between.
Utilities have complaints too. Consider industry groups like EEI, representing investor-owned companies, NRECA, representing co-ops, and even NARUC, representing state utility regulators. Each has proposed new rules to fix PURPA, a longtime favorite of enviros.
And don’t forget Berkshire Hathaway. Just ask Jonathan Weisgall, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs at Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which owns three regulated electric utilities serving customers in eleven states. He testified last year before Congress on what’s wrong with PURPA.
“That law today,” Weisgall said, “is imposing significant and unnecessary costs on utility customers.”
As an example Weisgall cited PacifiCorp, a Berkshire utility that he claims will have to ask customers over the next ten years to pay over a billion dollars in above-market costs to buy some thirty-nine million megawatt-hours of power from PURPA-qualified facilities. Power that, as Weisgall asserts, “they don’t even need.”
“And this is not an isolated example,” Weisgall added. “Many other utilities are facing similar dilemmas.”