Wonder when the pro”

utility politicians will figure out that ratepayers are voters?

The state’s Public Disservice Commission isn’t always wrong. It’s just wrong in rate-setting most of the time.
That’s why our state needs to deregulate the system that punishes ratepayers and fattens utility executives’ bank accounts.
Regulating monopolies costs millions of taxpayer dollars to support regulators, their staff, expenses and office space.
 But the PSC finally got it almost right when they cut the rate utilities and their ratepayers must pay for solar energy.
A lot has been written about the PSC ruling that lowered the solar industry rates that Duke Energy and Dominion Energy must pay for power. 
These utilities must pay for solar-produced electricity at whatever the PSC decides. 
This won’t hurt the utilities because the PSC will give them the rate increases they need to cover this cost. That’s where they hit your pocketbook if you are a Dominion customer.
Before the PSC decision, the rates Dominion and Duke had to pay were higher for solar than what it cost to produce electricity in their own plants, says energy expert Jim Clarkson of Resource Supply Management.
That extra cost was charged to Dominion’s 725,000 ratepayers.
But the PSC, in an unexpected flash of wisdom, lowered the rate, helping the ratepayers. 
The drop in rates is complicated, Clarkson said, but it basically looks like this: Dominion’s solar rate fell from 3 cents to 2 cents a kilowatt-hour. The solar industry wanted 4 cents.
The environmental and solar lobby have cranked up their publicity machines and are spewing out daily articles saying the state is threatening to cripple the solar power industry, Clarkson told manufacturers and other high power users who pay for his advice.
A number of politicians have jumped on the solar bandwagon and are criticizing Dominion and Duke, Clarkson said. 
A few years ago, the same politicians wouldn’t have uttered a word against these utilities.
Wonder when they will figure out that ratepayers are voters?
– JerryBellune@yahoo.com