FERC DENIES STUDY FOR SOUTHEAST POWER SHARING

Federal Regulators Deny Complaint over Glut in Southeastern Electric Supply – Without Denying the Excess Supply Exists; “Regulatory Contortion” allows Duke Energy, others to keep gouging customers by building power plants instead of sharing regional resources as the regulators have urged

Jim Warren, May 1, 2015 (NC WARN)

Despite huge amounts of excess power generation capacity on hand now and for decades to come – and dozens of large power plants sitting idle most of the year – protected monopoly utilities across the southeast keep building more plants instead of buying power from each other as federal regulators have urged…[but] those regulators denied a complaint by watchdog group NC WARN without contesting the federal data we used to show gross oversupply across the Southeast…In a classic Catch-22, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) denied our request for an independent study into how many billions could be saved annually if southeastern utilities begin sharing power supply through regional cooperation, as FERC has pressed for. FERC says we didn’t supply enough data…[but that] study is the only path to get all of the data on the table…NC WARN cited utility and federal data showing that southeastern utilities maintain power plant capacities ranging from 24 to 37 percent above the highest usage of the year. Those reserves are over twice as high as the industry standard of 14-15 percent, and for all but the very hottest and coldest months, excess capacity goes far higher in the Southeast…The regulators admit that they urge utilities to share resources and that they have jurisdiction to require them to do so…” click here for more

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