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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
California has a big — and growing — glut of power, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times has found. The state's power plants are on track to be able to produce at least 21% more electricity than it needs by 2020, based on official estimates. And that doesn't even count the soaring production of electricity by rooftop solar panels that has added to the surplus.
[...] This translates into a staggering bill. Although California uses 2.6% less electricity annually from the power grid now than in 2008, residential and business customers together pay $6.8 billion more for power than they did then. The added cost to customers will total many billions of dollars over the next two decades, because regulators have approved higher rates for years to come so utilities can recoup the expense of building and maintaining the new plants, transmission lines and related equipment, even if their power isn't needed.
How this came about is a tale of what critics call misguided and inept decision-making by state utility regulators, who have ignored repeated warnings going back a decade about a looming power glut.
[...] California utilities are "constantly crying wolf that we're always short of power and have all this need," said Bill Powers, a San Diego-based engineer and consumer advocate who has filed repeated objections with regulators to try to stop the approval of new plants. They are needlessly trying to attain a level of reliability that is a worst-case "act of God standard," he said.
Even with the growing glut of electricity, consumer critics have found that it is difficult to block the [Public Utilities Commission] (PUC) from approving new ones.
In 2010, regulators considered a request by [Pacific Gas and Electric Co.] (PG&E) to build a $1.15-billion power plant in Contra Costa County east of San Francisco, over objections that there wasn't sufficient demand for its power. One skeptic was PUC commissioner Dian Grueneich. She warned that the plant wasn't needed and its construction would lead to higher electricity rates for consumers — on top of the 28% increase the PUC had allowed for PG&E over the previous five years.
[...] Recent efforts to get courts to block several other PUC-approved plants have failed, however, so the projects are moving forward.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Wednesday February 08 2017, @11:51PM
Neither is Mexican. People of Mexican descent who are American citizens are Americans in the same way as Americans of other origins are. Hispanics, and anyone else, of Mexican descent who are citizens of Mexico are Mexicans. Our problem is we have a non-trivial percentage of Mexico residing, almost all of them illegally, within the United States. Mexico still claims them as its citizens, expects them to remit a large percentage of their earnings from the U.S. back to Mexico (lest Mexico's economy collapse), continue to exhibit loyalty to Mexico and Mexican politicians meddle in internal U.S. policy decisions on behalf of its nationals illegally invading our country.
Mexico is asserting the right to export their surplus population to the U.S. retain them as Citizens, benefit economically from them while the U.S. pays welfare benefits to them, educates their children, provides free medical care, etc. Since they have gotten away with such an absurdity for decades it is hard to fault them. The question that must be asked is why so many U.S. politicians support this policy. My question is why the word treason isn't applicable. Anyone?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09 2017, @02:16AM
> Neither is Mexican
However, refering to latinos as mexicans when they are in fact americans is racist.
> Mexico is asserting the right to export their surplus population to the U.S. retain them as Citizens, benefit economically from them while the U.S. pays welfare benefits to them, educates their children, provides free medical care, etc.
Blah, blah, blah
I am surprised you can even post, what with VLM's cock so deep in your throat that your eyes must be full of his pubes.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday February 09 2017, @10:39PM
I hear estimates of anywhere from 25-50 billion in remittance To Mexico. Though, our citizens send Mexico two to four times as much for drugs, about 110 billion. So don't worry about Mexico's economy. The American people are here to help!