VOICE asks hard questions on electricity costs from Feb. storm
[Excerpts]
Utility regulators had few answers for ratepayers Tuesday when asked why consumers, instead of shareholders, should shoulder the burden for ‘astronomical’ electricity costs resulting from February’s winter storm. . . . “This has been a very mild-mannered discussion of $4 billion being added to people’s (utility) bills, especially all the Oklahomans on fixed income,” said Steve Goldman, a member of VOICE, a coalition of Oklahoma City area churches and community organizations. “The consumers performed well here. This is for the commission to look at the practices of the utilities themselves and suppliers to utilities.”
Goldman said it was not extra consumer demand that fueled price increases, but rather a spike in prices and the lack of energy generation. He said three elected commissioners alone are going to decide how to divvy up $4 billion worth of costs to consumers, who should be able to expect stability in prices.
“Shareholders of utilities sign up for risk,” he said. “That’s part of the stock and bond system. So we’d like to hear from the commission what they see as their next steps in protecting consumers.” . . .
Nick Singer, also an advocate with VOICE, said securitization doesn’t eliminate the debt for consumers, it just spreads it out over years.
He demanded to know who profited off the winter storm.
Singer said he knows the investigation is ongoing, but “it’s just getting harder and harder to find who got these gigantic checks, and who made this money. I think that’s something that the public deserves to know is who we are giving all this money to.” . . .