🚀 go-pugleaf

mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM (Mark Crispin) writes:

>It proves that providing utility service to an almost entirely urban or
>suburban customer base is considerably cheaper than providing utility service
>to a customer base that includes super-remote rural areas -- especially when,
>by government regulation, the cost of providing service to the expensive areas
>is spread out over the entire customer base so that everyone pays the same low
>rate.

Sorry to both of yous guys, but the main reason that Seattle City light
rates are among the lowest in the country (lower than almost any other
major urban area - this shoots a hole in Mark's argument) is that 50-75%
of their power is supplied by their wholly-owned, fully-amortized, and
(relatively) cheap hydroelectric dams on the Skagit River. Puget Power,
on the other hand, has to either generate its own power using fossil
fuels or buy it at higher (near market) rates from the BPA (with its
newer, higher-cost dams and WPPSS involvement), or at very high (full
market) rates from the West Coast grid.

You two can argue public vs. private, rural distribution vs. city
distribution, and bureacratic (in)efficiency all you like, but these
factors almost certainly pale in comparison to the cost of generating
the power itself. And City Light's advantage here is so large as to make
any other comparisons both silly and moot.

-- 
David Ruggiero  (jdavid@halcyon.com)       Seattle, WA: Home of the Moss People