Commentary—

How To Beat The Electric Cartel

By William A. Collins

Trinkets buy,

Where e’er you roam;

But make your power,

Near at home.

A letter came the other day from LEVCO, offering electricity at 2.5 percent off our current bill. Yes, now that Connecticut is sort of deregulated, outsiders are allowed to do that sort of thing. Here’s how it works. LEVCO represents Dominion Power, owner of the Millstone nuclear plant. You and I subsidize Millstone through our federal taxes, and our legislature (through the deregulation law) allowed Dominion to buy Millstone for a song from Northeast Utilities. We still subsidize that deal too in our electric bills. So, if you’re not troubled by nuclear energy, you might as well sign up. You’re already paying for the discount anyway.

You’ll also be forgiven if you’ve come to believe that electricity is a rigged game. It is. Take CL&P. In a recent bill stuffer, it made the comment that the state forced it to sell off all its power plants. Right. Actually the company spent hundreds of thousands lobbying for that law because it bailed CL&P out of some crippling bad investments. Now we all get to pay for what should have been charged to its shareholders.

But lately the industry scam has gotten even worse. Two federal agencies have now decreed a painful rate increase for southwestern Connecticut. It’s supposed to compensate the big power generators for their extra cost in pumping juice through our outdated transmission lines. The feds’ further hope is that this high markup will induce those generators to build some new plants here in Fairfield and New Haven counties. The theory is that they could make even more money by turning out their product closer to their customers.

Good luck. Only a player with time and cash to burn will try siting a new power plant along Connecticut’s Gold or Silver Coasts. Up in Massachusetts there’s even a pitched battle over siting windmills — never mind an oil or coal burner. And as we well know, there already are idle “Sooty Six” plants in Norwalk, Bridgeport, Milford, and New Haven that producers could upgrade at the drop of a hat if they wanted. They don’t. They’re doing just fine as it is, thank you.

But those dingy old relics, properly reborn, would offer Connecticut a means to throw off its yoke of electrical servitude, if only our state or local leaders had sufficient vision to buy them. Keep in mind that nearly a third of all power in this country is already produced by government agencies, though here in Connecticut we never even think of that.

Perhaps that’s because so far our rates have been held comfortably in check by the utility commission and by legislative edict. But that commission has now been written out of the process, and the state edicts are phasing out. Plus the feds have suddenly stepped in to arbitrarily raise our rates even more. As before an approaching tsunami, the wild animals are headed for the hills.

Luckily, there’s a better solution. Los Angeles and Sacramento adopted it years ago, and consequently survived the great California energy meltdown undisturbed. Those two cities run their own utilities. They generate their own power and distribute it to citizens untouched by corporate hands. No, it can’t save them from a spike in fuel prices, but it marvelously protects them from the likes of Enron, from meddling industry-dominated federal agencies, and from having to construct remarkably intrusive long-distance power lines.

The obvious solution then, is for the state itself to acquire the “Sooty Six” (or their host towns could do it individually), rebuild the guts to modern standards, and produce a goodly chunk of our own power needs. This would protect local businesses and homeowners alike against cartel-inspired price hikes. We could then also buy a lot more juice from wind farms, thus proudly becoming the nation’s environmental leader.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)