Texas PUC stooges stick it to us

From left, head robber-baron henchman Barry T. Smitherman, Chairman Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC), with commissioners Donna L. Nelson and Kenneth W. Anderson, Jr.
Lawyer, lawyer, lawyer. Governor crony? Token woman? Mars inhabitant?

Go ahead, click the links, read their bios.

At left, the more likeable Stooges,
although Donna up there seems like a nice woman, from her bio.

Our three Texas stooges are turning our electricity provider Oncor into thugs by rewarding bad behavior.
Nutshell situation:

• Electric meters mandated for updating. Good idea.
• Oncor rushes out and buys some meters. Wrong move.
• PUC sets standards for new "smart" meters. Big ooops.
• Oncor whines about bad business decision. Suck it up, y'all.
• PUC says poor baby wasted money on meters, you need a rate boost. Huh?

When every every thing is trending down, like oh...
natural gas prices,
consumption of goods,
consumption of services,
employment,
natural gas prices, did I mention those?
I meant the natural gas they use to generate electricity.
That natural gas. It's cheaper now.

Yeah, with prices slashed everywhere, yesterday our PUC stooges gave our electric provider a raise!
A raise of $115,000,000 a year.
Was that because it costs less, LESS to make electricity now? So they should charge MORE?
Well yes, that, plus they wasted all that money on the wrong new meters.
Who made them king?

It should have been the other way around. The real worker-bees, the PUC staff, said rates should be cut. So did 148 cities full of ratepayers. Their lawyer called for a cutback of $175,000,000. State Rep Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, agreed.

Me, too. When you are a giga-mega-million-dollar utility company you do not get to have buyer's remorse. You do get to fire the buyer, maybe even the whole procurement department. And you do get to suck it up and go on. Take your lumps. Forgo obscene outrageous profits for a few quarters. A few years.

Because it's for ELEVEN years you want to tack a few cents on our bills each month to pay for YOUR mistake.
Sorry. I have all I can handle paying for my own mistakes.

PS. Dear Oncor, If I have a new, wrong meter that needs replacement, let me have it when you remove it. I bet I can sell it somewhere like China or Arkansas and get some of my money back. Do ya think y'all could do the same?

Get real.

We DO import wind turbine blades

Last night at a dinner party a friend--whose uncle used to be harbormaster for the Port of Galveston--said he sees the blades stacked on the wharf often on visits to Galveston. Yes, huge.
And then a blade gets on a truck and heads up I-45. A few loads of those really snarls traffic.

photo by tigone

"Bulker [bulk freighter] CATHRIN OLDENDORFF with a deck cargo of wind turbine blades, estimated to be 33m (108 feet) each in length. Galveston, Texas, January 27, 2007."

I'd estimate I agree with the length. Because they were longer than two rail cars, which are 40ft [to accommodate a 40'container] when I saw them on Saturday.

My f/Friend Fred tells me that the world-beater wind farm project T. Boone Pickens is building up by Pampa features blades from a Danish company that sources the manufacturing in Vietnam. Good money, Vietnam!

So I went looking to see where these things are made. Answer: everywhere! Whoa, talk about helping the developing world. That's good. What could be easier? Got breeze? Got power!

Thank goodness people like T. Boone got money to put the wind farms on the grid.

Wind-turbine blades are huge

See the train in the trestle in this pic? Today I drove under it and there was a parked train full of blades for wind-turbine electric generators. One blade spanned the street. It's a 6-lane divided street. It was about 2 1/2 miles of train with those blades, which are apparently twice as long as a standard rail car.


View Larger Map

The blades could have been as big as this prototype of a huge one. Maybe even bigger.

The website* describes it as:
GE Wind Energy's 3.6 megawatt wind turbine is one of the largest prototypes ever erected. Larger wind turbines are more efficient and cost effective.

These were NOT made in China. Trust me, they are waaaaaay too big to fit in a container.


* http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/wind_how.html