Here's something you might be interested in.
Let us assume a worst-case planning scenario and assume for argument's sake that we fail the statewide IQ test by amending the California Constitution with the Pacific Gas & Electric initiative Proposition 16 next week. According to FEMA's Emergency Management Institute, these scenario-driven desktop exercises are a good way to start planning for emergency incidents, and in this economy, any increase in my or any of my neighbors' utility bills qualifies as an economic emergency under EMI's all-hazard preparedness paradigm.
As part of the worst-case scenario, we will also assume that California's Public Utility Commission (CPUC) gives uninsured wildfire legal expense billing authority to the investor owned utilities (or IOUs as San Diego Gas & Electric, PG&E and Southern California Edison are known collectively to CPUC).
The IOUs have already put some time into thinking about this. Here in San Diego, SDG&E has its cleverly-named CARE program to reduce power bills to low-income ratepaying customers by about 20%. After all, corporate public utilities don't get paid anything when any of us customers start falling off the grid.
But what about the rest of us?
It helps us to know what we are up against.
In 2003 and 2007, San Diego County wildfires were started in part by SDG&E overhead power equipment failures. In the more recent county wildfire complex, San Diegans experienced the largest mass evacuation in Southern California history to avoid being overrun by multiple wildfires. As SDG&E has been investigated and did in fact produce numerous employee witnesses to testify during those investigations, it is safe to say that SDG&E is now very aware of its role in those fires, yet putting most SDG&E power lines underground is not projected to be completed until 2063.
At Sempra Energy, investing corporate profits into public safety infrastructure improvements at its SDG&E unit takes a back seat to maintaining a decent corporate dividend payout to shareholders, just like BP and its second-rate priorities for deep-sea drilling safety.
As top-level IOU executives testified to last year in their joint application for Wildfire Expense Balancing Account (WEBA) authority, utility employee negligence and other wildfire-producing factors are an “ordinary” part of distributing electricity to customers. The overhead power lines are not coming down any time soon, so we can expect to see more massive wildfires as early as this year. The original WEBA application was to have been granted last year (current status: still under negotiation between parties for and against), which is a good reason to suspect that the corporate utilities consider themselves lucky that we didn't go up in flames in 2009.
Maybe in 2010?
To sum all that up, WEBA means that everything connected to wildfires, especially legal expenses and courtroom losses by SDG&E, PG&E and SCE, are billed to customers over time if there isn't enough insurance available to pay the tab. SDG&E already has a separate application filed with CPUC to call its post-2007 insurance cost increases and concurrent loss of coverage a billable “Z-Factor” as an unexpected surprise of an expense, so we know that WEBA or not, our power utility bills will go up.
By comparison, I don't know a driver alive today who doesn't expect some sort of personal insurance consequences for having an auto accident. One should expect an outright denial of coverage for causing a massively-damaging series of incidents stemming from any anticipated negligent behavior, whether an excuse existed in some state agency regulation for that behavior or not.
A Smaller Utility Bill When Electricity Rates Are Surely Rising
Those of us who are so unfortunate as to have more income than our CARE-qualifying neighbors can get creative in avoiding any SDG&E WEBA billings by being our own personal energy providers, as long as we keep things off the grid.
On the other hand, there are numerous federal and state tax credits for people who install grid-connected solar panels and other alternative energy generation options, but there are also considerable obstacles to be navigated before those credits are collected by us as individuals.
Anyone installing grid-connected solar panels needs to first get a permit from the City of San Diego, which conveniently raised its related home improvement permit fee earlier this year. The City wants its cut of the action, and you may vote on Proposition D in response as you please.
Once the grid-connected solar panels are installed by competent licensed contractors at $20,000 or more, one may reduce household power consumption from the grid to zero, but any excess electricity is seized and re-sold by SDG&E without reimbursement to the household producing that excess electricity in the first place.
Anyone expecting to be paid for their excess electricity from grid-connected solar panels needs to apply to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to be household-labeled as a Qualifying Facility (QF), like one has built a hobby-sized nuclear reactor in the backyard. SDG&E claims it will help consumers with their FERC QF applications, but state law limits the number of us who can qualify to only 5% of the customer base in the San Diego utility service area. The rest of us are left out as far as reimbursement for confiscated electricity goes.
To be honest, as long as SDG&E slow-walks the paperwork, it gets to keep confiscating excess electricity without reimbursement on an annual basis, so there is a built-in bias towards losing residential FERC QF applications in the SDG&E billing system. So far, nobody seems to have yet raised this point in opposition to SDG&E's home-generation electricity reimbursement rate application to CPUC.
Lower Bills with the Off-Grid Solar Option
If there is a way to avoid government intervention in my personal energy usage, then I am going to take it, especially if that way includes legally avoiding taxes, fees, and other government-imposed sanctions.
A lot of us are using small-scale off-grid solar generation already.
Along the driveway, there are several solar-powered lawn lights, purchased on the open market at the local big-box store. Those solar-powered lawn lights are not connected to the power grid. No permits were required. No additional government inspectors were hired. No lawn light electricity is confiscated by any IOU, and no developers have had to increase their campaign contributions to local politicians to make any of this happen or not happen.
Simple is as simple does.
Harbor Freight has been selling a one-yard-square system of free-standing solar panels for about $250, often much less on sale in a given month. The $250 three-panel system requires a power inverter that runs maybe $30 or so, and through the inverter one gets two 120-volt outlets putting out a total of 45 watts of electricity. This is enough to light up three 15-watt CFL bulbs, sufficient to light up the living room with three tabletop lamps. Add a couple of 12-volt car batteries for storage, and the living room is now off the grid as far as lighting goes.
An investment of roughly $2500 retail in free-standing off-grid solar panels provides 450 watts of electricity. By comparison, a new energy-efficient refrigerator will run on under 250 watts, leaving enough excess home-generation capacity to run my laptop with ancient ink jet printer while also lighting several rooms in the house. With beer in the fridge and a fully-powered laptop system, I have the essentials of a software/on-line content micro-enterprise at home. On sale, I can probably do 450 watts in off-grid solar panels for less than $2000.
Positives and Negatives: Poles Apart
On the plus side, those solar panels are not connected to the power grid.
No permits are required. No additional government inspectors need be hired. No electricity is confiscated by SDG&E, and no developers have to increase their campaign contributions to local politicians to make any of this happen or not happen. Also, when the grid does fail locally as it has several times this year already, I have at least some no-fuel-required power generation capacity, so I am not just sitting here whistling in the dark when that happens.
On the minus side, I have a few extension cord issues to deal with and regular battery-switching chores, but there are plans to install a totally-modular alternative household distribution network that has absolutely no connection to SDG&E's power grid. This alternate wiring network requires no more fees, permits and/or inspections than using the above-mentioned extension cords because it consists of nothing but extension cords.
Did I forget to mention that this option cuts my household power-grid consumption by at least 20% with a corresponding drop in my monthly energy bills for the rest of my un-natural life?
Mission: Accomplished, with no thanks to BP, PG&E, or any part of Sempra Energy.
Otherwise, I'd have to keep sending SDG&E more free electricity, every day.
Let us assume a worst-case planning scenario and assume for argument's sake that we fail the statewide IQ test by amending the California Constitution with the Pacific Gas & Electric initiative Proposition 16 next week. According to FEMA's Emergency Management Institute, these scenario-driven desktop exercises are a good way to start planning for emergency incidents, and in this economy, any increase in my or any of my neighbors' utility bills qualifies as an economic emergency under EMI's all-hazard preparedness paradigm.
As part of the worst-case scenario, we will also assume that California's Public Utility Commission (CPUC) gives uninsured wildfire legal expense billing authority to the investor owned utilities (or IOUs as San Diego Gas & Electric, PG&E and Southern California Edison are known collectively to CPUC).
The IOUs have already put some time into thinking about this. Here in San Diego, SDG&E has its cleverly-named CARE program to reduce power bills to low-income ratepaying customers by about 20%. After all, corporate public utilities don't get paid anything when any of us customers start falling off the grid.
But what about the rest of us?
It helps us to know what we are up against.
In 2003 and 2007, San Diego County wildfires were started in part by SDG&E overhead power equipment failures. In the more recent county wildfire complex, San Diegans experienced the largest mass evacuation in Southern California history to avoid being overrun by multiple wildfires. As SDG&E has been investigated and did in fact produce numerous employee witnesses to testify during those investigations, it is safe to say that SDG&E is now very aware of its role in those fires, yet putting most SDG&E power lines underground is not projected to be completed until 2063.
At Sempra Energy, investing corporate profits into public safety infrastructure improvements at its SDG&E unit takes a back seat to maintaining a decent corporate dividend payout to shareholders, just like BP and its second-rate priorities for deep-sea drilling safety.
As top-level IOU executives testified to last year in their joint application for Wildfire Expense Balancing Account (WEBA) authority, utility employee negligence and other wildfire-producing factors are an “ordinary” part of distributing electricity to customers. The overhead power lines are not coming down any time soon, so we can expect to see more massive wildfires as early as this year. The original WEBA application was to have been granted last year (current status: still under negotiation between parties for and against), which is a good reason to suspect that the corporate utilities consider themselves lucky that we didn't go up in flames in 2009.
Maybe in 2010?
To sum all that up, WEBA means that everything connected to wildfires, especially legal expenses and courtroom losses by SDG&E, PG&E and SCE, are billed to customers over time if there isn't enough insurance available to pay the tab. SDG&E already has a separate application filed with CPUC to call its post-2007 insurance cost increases and concurrent loss of coverage a billable “Z-Factor” as an unexpected surprise of an expense, so we know that WEBA or not, our power utility bills will go up.
By comparison, I don't know a driver alive today who doesn't expect some sort of personal insurance consequences for having an auto accident. One should expect an outright denial of coverage for causing a massively-damaging series of incidents stemming from any anticipated negligent behavior, whether an excuse existed in some state agency regulation for that behavior or not.
A Smaller Utility Bill When Electricity Rates Are Surely Rising
Those of us who are so unfortunate as to have more income than our CARE-qualifying neighbors can get creative in avoiding any SDG&E WEBA billings by being our own personal energy providers, as long as we keep things off the grid.
On the other hand, there are numerous federal and state tax credits for people who install grid-connected solar panels and other alternative energy generation options, but there are also considerable obstacles to be navigated before those credits are collected by us as individuals.
Anyone installing grid-connected solar panels needs to first get a permit from the City of San Diego, which conveniently raised its related home improvement permit fee earlier this year. The City wants its cut of the action, and you may vote on Proposition D in response as you please.
Once the grid-connected solar panels are installed by competent licensed contractors at $20,000 or more, one may reduce household power consumption from the grid to zero, but any excess electricity is seized and re-sold by SDG&E without reimbursement to the household producing that excess electricity in the first place.
Anyone expecting to be paid for their excess electricity from grid-connected solar panels needs to apply to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to be household-labeled as a Qualifying Facility (QF), like one has built a hobby-sized nuclear reactor in the backyard. SDG&E claims it will help consumers with their FERC QF applications, but state law limits the number of us who can qualify to only 5% of the customer base in the San Diego utility service area. The rest of us are left out as far as reimbursement for confiscated electricity goes.
To be honest, as long as SDG&E slow-walks the paperwork, it gets to keep confiscating excess electricity without reimbursement on an annual basis, so there is a built-in bias towards losing residential FERC QF applications in the SDG&E billing system. So far, nobody seems to have yet raised this point in opposition to SDG&E's home-generation electricity reimbursement rate application to CPUC.
Lower Bills with the Off-Grid Solar Option
If there is a way to avoid government intervention in my personal energy usage, then I am going to take it, especially if that way includes legally avoiding taxes, fees, and other government-imposed sanctions.
A lot of us are using small-scale off-grid solar generation already.
Along the driveway, there are several solar-powered lawn lights, purchased on the open market at the local big-box store. Those solar-powered lawn lights are not connected to the power grid. No permits were required. No additional government inspectors were hired. No lawn light electricity is confiscated by any IOU, and no developers have had to increase their campaign contributions to local politicians to make any of this happen or not happen.
Simple is as simple does.
Harbor Freight has been selling a one-yard-square system of free-standing solar panels for about $250, often much less on sale in a given month. The $250 three-panel system requires a power inverter that runs maybe $30 or so, and through the inverter one gets two 120-volt outlets putting out a total of 45 watts of electricity. This is enough to light up three 15-watt CFL bulbs, sufficient to light up the living room with three tabletop lamps. Add a couple of 12-volt car batteries for storage, and the living room is now off the grid as far as lighting goes.
An investment of roughly $2500 retail in free-standing off-grid solar panels provides 450 watts of electricity. By comparison, a new energy-efficient refrigerator will run on under 250 watts, leaving enough excess home-generation capacity to run my laptop with ancient ink jet printer while also lighting several rooms in the house. With beer in the fridge and a fully-powered laptop system, I have the essentials of a software/on-line content micro-enterprise at home. On sale, I can probably do 450 watts in off-grid solar panels for less than $2000.
Positives and Negatives: Poles Apart
On the plus side, those solar panels are not connected to the power grid.
No permits are required. No additional government inspectors need be hired. No electricity is confiscated by SDG&E, and no developers have to increase their campaign contributions to local politicians to make any of this happen or not happen. Also, when the grid does fail locally as it has several times this year already, I have at least some no-fuel-required power generation capacity, so I am not just sitting here whistling in the dark when that happens.
On the minus side, I have a few extension cord issues to deal with and regular battery-switching chores, but there are plans to install a totally-modular alternative household distribution network that has absolutely no connection to SDG&E's power grid. This alternate wiring network requires no more fees, permits and/or inspections than using the above-mentioned extension cords because it consists of nothing but extension cords.
Did I forget to mention that this option cuts my household power-grid consumption by at least 20% with a corresponding drop in my monthly energy bills for the rest of my un-natural life?
Mission: Accomplished, with no thanks to BP, PG&E, or any part of Sempra Energy.
Otherwise, I'd have to keep sending SDG&E more free electricity, every day.