Yeah, this guy shouldn’t be allowed to count any volts of ours (reformatted, emphasis mine):
State Consumer Advocate Donald Kreis said issuing the bonds should save some customers money, but he was critical of the utility’s spending. “This stems from PSNH having made a hugely improvident investment decision by wasting $400 million on a scrubber at Merrimack Station” in Bow, he said. Kreis said it is important to remind people that “the relentless zeal of utilities to buy new toys always ends up on the back of ratepayers.”
Well of course, you nitwit. When companies spend money on capital improvements, that cost is going to be passed along as a cost of doing business. What do you think, they’re going to eat that cost? And it is clear that Kries didn’t do his homework AND has no clue. And no idea, seemingly, that the
that a highly regulated entity is just going out and buy such a “toy” because of “me too! me too!” is ludicrous. Thus, let the smack down begin:
Murray said Eversource, the Legislature and Kreis’s office (prior to Kreis’s arrival) all backed the deal, which included recovering the cost of the scrubber. “There’s really no benefit to continuing to debate past mandates by the Legislature in terms of the construction of the scrubber,” he said.
Get that part – “the Legislature…all backed the deal”? If memory serves me well, when the Legislature gets involved, a bill is passed – a lot of times mandating a given, certain behavior including adding on costs that ordinarily wouldn’t be spent.
But Eversource deserves a share of the blame, according to the consumer advocate. “The Legislature didn’t write a blank check to Eversource, and Eversource could have shut down Merrimack Station instead of building an uneconomic scrubber,” Kreis said.
No, but they leaned on PSNH to put it in – regulations on air quality dontcha know. If Kreis should be blaming anyone, blame the greens that made it such an issue and then rent-seeked to make the cost of our energy more expensive.
And that last part “…Eversource could have shut down Merrimack Station..” is just plain dumb. You have a plant that makes money by delivering a product that consumers wish to buy and you just say “well, they could have just hit the OFF switch”. Gosh, let him run a company that size – he makes it seem so easy – “just turn it off”.
(H/T: UL)
