The Oil Drum

I agree. It is funny (maybe a better word is tragic) how one finds exactly the same problems, as one looks around from area to area.

Even our problem of not adding new skilled workers is in some ways similar. We have found it possible to just cover what needs to be done with our existing older workforce, without investing in new workers. Our younger folks are expected to work at McDonald's and become physicians/lawyers/script writers and all manners of service providers. Young folks going into engineering have found jobs lacking for quite a few years, and we are starting to figure out why.

A similar problem exists with a lot of colleges and universities. College presidents aren't interested in allocating resources to unglamorous behind-the-scenes stuff like roofs, plumbing, wiring, HVAC, structural repairs, etc. Instead, they want to build impressive-looking new buildings, add innovative new programs that will be written about in the press, and give scholarships to athletes that will help their teams achieve a winning season. These are the glitzy, showy things that will impress the alumni, and donors, and boards of trustees. Meanwhile, the deferred maintenance accumulates, and the campus slowly crumbles. By the time the maintenance can be deferred no longer and the bills become due, the college presidents that should have attended to it are long since retired -- probably with their name attached to a building or an endowed chair or a statue on the central green.

Well put. Some 17 years ago I collaborated on an article for Information Week magazine called BLACKOUT. All utilities are required to post with their state public utility commission an annual statement of their normal capacity, and peak capacity, as well as their projections for the next five years. Collecting this is 1990 was a chore because of no internet access, today it faily easy. What you quickly find is that nearly every utility is in negative territory(not enough power)at peak usage and has to buy it off some other utility that isn't experiencing a similar crunch. Our forecasts in the article pretty much bore out in real life some five to seven years down the road. The other problem was created by the wonderful problem solving group, Congress in the early 1990s, with an Energy Act that was going to give us all kinds of benefits. Basically it focuses on the three pieces of a utility, generation, transmission, and distribution. Congress thought there was not enough competition, so they decided in all their wisdom, to allow a utility to only own 2 of the 3 pieces. Most utilities quickly shed their transmission capabilities by selling it to a 3rd party. As you can well imagine, transmission isn't a great revenue generator, so the transmission portion seems to be a single point of failure in this whole scenario. But wait, we have a savior that steped up, ENRON. Within two years California was on its knees with rolling brownouts and blackouts. I am reminded of the old saying by Will Rogers on the radio back in the 30's when he closed out his broadcast by saying to his audience, "You should be able to sleep well tonight ladies and gentlemen, Congress is not in session"

Reduced to a bumper sticker, the new industry mantra is:

Privatize the profits,
Socialize the costs.

In the wake of the Enron collapse, very little attention has been paid to the regulatory distortions put in place by Enron and other utility industry lobbyists.

Thanks for doing this summary, Gail.