The Perverse Incentives of Utility Companies – EARLY ACCESS, AD-FREE, and UNCENSORED
Added 2022-08-29 17:48:28 +0000 UTCHi. Oh no! The quest for ever-growing profits has led to screwed-up priorities, corruption, and disaster in the U.S. energy industry! This is Part 3 in our series looking at how the Profit Motive creates bizarre and often grotesque incentives that push industries to do the opposite of what they should.
Comments
Here’s a weird: I just received an email from the CEO of my local gas and electric company. It’s the “I’m stepping down, thanks for all the support” blah blah blah. That’s… fine on its own I guess. But it gets funny when I think that the CEO of the company I actually worked for stepped down last year, and I got no such email. So there’s something to be said about how my utilities company is trying to make itself look human, and the company I worked for clearly did not. Anyway, just thought I’d share.
Chris Combs
2022-09-06 19:05:57 +0000 UTCSo I did want to comment here, only because I'm close to the industry and I was curious about some things (or was hoping you guys were aware). 1. And I think perhaps the biggest one here, is there are actually government owned and operated power companies in the United States. Both BPA (Bonneville Power Administration) in the Pacific Northwest and TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) in the Southeast are vestiges of the new deal and Federally Owned electric utility companies. I'd be curious to see a comparison made there (as obviously they too have their flaws and fuckups), as they are FAR more regulated then the commercial sector. 2. On the point of "More Green Energy". That was something I think initially when I stepped into the industry seemed super straight forward, but now understanding how electric demand works does muddy the waters a bit. A.) Solar and Wind just do NOT work in a lot of places, you can slap a windmill in a forest and get some power from it, or a solar panel in a swamp, but the power output from those sources while fine for stuff like base load is not useful for the extreme fluctuations in power demand that occur throughout a day. So while yes you could just run more baseload then you ever need demand you have to put that power somewhere or you're going to just cause issues. That is (much to my chagrin) where Gas actually does fairly well. It's easy to spin up and spin down with regards to demand and to keep the power grid relatively in sync with what's required of it Now there are alternatives to gas, but they are INCREDIBLY expensive. One such alternative is basically giant man made lake batteries (Raccoon Mountain is an example of one). But you do need some kind of energy storage to help make sure that output matches demand B.) There was.. I don't want to call it a dismissive tone, but an interesting one with regards to nuclear, which I feel like deserves its own examinations and considerations. Nuclear plants are prohibitively expensive to construct and then certify. And even if you have a reactor ready to go it can take upwards of 10 - 20 years for the certification process to complete. The damage 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl did to the nuclear industry and people's outlook on it has done a lot of damage to research into nuclear power as well. Small modular reactors are only just now being looked at by the national labs (like ORNL [Oak Ridge National Lab]). There is a ton in nuclear fission we have yet to explore because basically we as a society got spooked and Godzilla pilled on the prospect of radiation. Anyway sorry that was miserably serious, tell Katie she can't sell your fingies no matter how much money they may be worth.
Alnarra
2022-09-01 05:13:40 +0000 UTC
