The company says it needs to raise utility bills an average of about 21% to help pay for higher coal and natural gas, as well as to offset the impact of drought conditions on hydroelectric generation. It is also seeking a temporary 7.6% hike through mid-2024 to pay for a sudden surge in fuel prices last year caused by extreme weather.
Bulwark:
[Rocky Mountain Power’s president and chief executive] said Rocky Mountain Power’s renewable projects, including wind farms and new transmission lines, have helped avoid an additional 65% increase in net power costs.
Nothing can be done for these customers except reducing their exposure to gas and coal prices. This illustrates why the energy transition is such an important security issue.
“First, they’ll get hit by increases in their electric bills. Next, they will see an increase in the cost of everything else they buy, as Wyoming businesses will pass increased power costs on to Wyoming consumers,” said Sam Shumway, who heads [AARP’s] state office.
“I’m not too sure that the state shouldn’t take over your business, buy you out and deliver the electricity to our people,” Republican State Rep. Bill Allemand said at a recent hearing, referring to Rocky Mountain Power.
I agree with the Republican state rep here. Government should already be doing that.
How will making the power generation system assets government owned and it’s employees government employees lower fuel costs?
Does that mean raising taxes to subsidize electricity generation so that “rates” remain flat but total expenses increase through higher taxes? How does that help?
My support for the idea is purely ideological. Infrastructure should be publicly owned by default, that’s all.
In this situation, government takeover wouldn’t do anything to lower costs. I don’t know what motivated that representative to suggest it. I am certain that he doesn’t agree with me.
Debra Goldsmith, a single mother who works part time as a bookkeeper in Casper, worries she won’t be able to afford a major increase in utility bills. Goldsmith, who is on oxygen because of a health condition, needs extra electricity to help power her concentrator machine.
An oxygen concentrator uses about the same energy as a refrigerator. I’m going to have to call emotional appeal hoping no one actually knows the amount of energy being referenced.
“A lot of our community are on fixed income, older, retired or small families. An extra $20 a month is hard on them,” said Leah Juarez, the mayor of Mills, a town of about 4,400.
Trying to deflect now? No one said she wasn’t poor. Just pointing out that her oxygen generator isn’t driving her energy costs. The inclusion of her health issue and use of an oxygen generator was meant to elicit a sympathetic emotional response (emotion based marketing) for the premise of the article.
[Rocky Mountain Power’s president and chief executive] said Rocky Mountain Power’s renewable projects, including wind farms and new transmission lines, have helped avoid an additional 65% increase in net power costs.
Emotional appeal to a soulless cash grab, dependent on the idiots buying into the lies.
First lie was the drought situation. Wyoming modifies their weather at will. Droughts are on purpose in a world where Cloud Seeding has been in use to control weather and refill reservoirs for the last ~100 years.
The article is full of mental diarrhea and so is anyone else spreading that propaganda.
ETA:
Here’s a 5 year cloud seeding experiment carried out in Missouri, from 1960 - 1964.
If only leftists could understand basic economics and how choice lowers prices. Govt can only increase costs, which is why they always put inthe low income subsidy as a talking point.
