Dereg not working
Once again, Mitch Schnurman has it wrong. Deregulating our electricity was not good and is not good. (See: “More proof that electric competition is working,” Wednesday)
He says the competition is “working.” It is only working toward putting money into middlemen’s pockets. The retail electric providers do not produce or transmit one kilowatt of electricity; they just buy and resell it at a profit.
Maybe that is why more than 100 Texas cities have banded together to fight deregulation and expose deregulation as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Rates are low, purely and simply, because of the Barnett Shale play and other recent gas finds in the U.S. There is a glut. This will not always be the case. Then watch where the price of a kilowatt-hour goes, especially in light of the fact that natural gas is used in Texas as the marginal fuel when figuring electricity prices.
Maybe one of the goofiest things he says is, “Consider that investors, not ratepayers, paid for the new generation, representing more than half of today’s total capacity. And since then, rates have declined, often sharply.” Does he not think that the investors are not charging this back to us, and at a profit to boot?
— John T. Johnson, III, Arlington
Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/07/07/3207334/fourth-of-july-electric-dereg.html#ixzz1Rp2SCe4S