Our electric Companies Are Getting Clobbered By Government Regs (Obama, fence, 9/11)

[OICU812]

For people who don't keep up, the new rules, regulations and mandates coming from Washington DC are monumental in their cost requirements, and the smaller, non-profits like electrical G&T co-ops are getting clobbered.

I got curious a several months back and started to educate myself on what our local electrical coops are having to do, to keep up with new regulations. I had a computer crash and lost most all of those links, but I remember what I read, and have done some painstaking Google searches and found similar links.

1) After 9/11 the government decided to protect all our power plants from cyber attacks, so power companies had to spend tens of millions of dollars each, to take out non-secure phone lines, data lines, cell phone and satellite links, and replace them with a cyber secure RF and fiber networks. New changes to these regs come out all the time, and new costs to coops are mounting.

2) Then the EPA came out with new air quality regs, and as I've pointed out my local coop spent $150 million to retrofit it's power plants.

3) Then they came out with new mandates for perimeter security at the plants, causing them to erect fences, guard shacks, and secure entry systems. If the facility has nuclear power, then additional costs are required.

4) Then they came out with mandates for redundancy command and control facilities, requiring power companies to build two control and communications centers, in case a natural disaster or terror attack took out the building containing their communications and control center. Get that, an entirely new building, in a different are then the current one, so that the same storm or explosion would not take it out too.

5) Then they want to regulate green house gases from backup generators. Every electrical coop has diesel, gas or propane powered generators, they kick on during power outages so that critical equipment stays powered. Many municipals use larger versions of these generators during a power outages caused by storms, or to offset peak hours when energy costs soar, and switching their town or village over to diesel powered electricity is more economical. Some coops have hundreds of these generators.

6) To regulate greenhouse gases emitted by these generators, the EPA is mandating that every time a generator is turned on, that the date/time and reason for running the generator be logged and submitted to the EPA. This means they need to monitor every generator, and log the hours they are used. Keep in mind, many of these generators are in the middle of nowhere, and are automatically switched on during emergencies, or to cycle them monthly for routine maintenance.

7) Now they want all coops that decided to "go green" and build a small wind farm or solar array, to monitor and adjust them in 15 minute intervals. This will cost some small coops $1-$2 million each year to buy the equipment, software and hire new employees.

8) Then there is Obama's push for electric companies to upgrade their transmission lines and install this new smart grid. Keep in mind that all of these new costs, mandates and regs are coming during "the worst economy since the Great Depression".

I'm sure there are more cost escalating regs and mandates that I am clueless about, but I know about these. Our electric companies are being clobbered from all sides. It's as if no one in government talks to anyone else, and they are all going on their own tangents, and their accumulative efforts are destroying some power companies and over burdening others.

[OICU812]

Well, when you electric bills start climbing, then you might care.