State Representative Gail Riecken, City Councilman John Friend, and County Commissioner Stephen Melcher held a press conference in the Civic Center today to announce that the Indiana Utilities Regulatory Commission will be holding a hearing with respect to a rate request made by Vectren to install dense pack technology in two turbines at their A.B. Brown Generating Facility.
Also attending the meeting and available for questions was Mr. Don Mottley, a disabled American Veteran who has been collecting signatures on a petition initiated by Councilman Friend to bring meetings of the IURC to Evansville and to hold Vectren rates flat until other utilities “catch up” to Vectrens when EPA compliance upgrades are installed. Vectren officials have consistently stated that other areas will equalize with Vectren that was a voluntary early adopter of EPA requirements.
Mr. Mottley stated today that over 90% of the people that he has asked to sign the petition have done so and that the only people refusing to sign have been Vectren employees or Vectren contractors who fear losing their work if their signatures are discovered on this petition. He also raised the issue of how campaign contributions from utility companies are made to the Governor who then appoints members of the IURC who seem to favor utility positions. Mr. Mottley agrees with Commissioner Melcher that these positions should be elected.
Councilman Friend responded to questions from the audience that SW Indiana ratepayers pay more than 60% higher rates than the average across Indiana and that across the money saving bridge in Henderson residents only pay about 38 cents on the dollar what Evansville families do for electricity. He expanded that Vectren’s rates keep property values down and that in the commercial area for every dollar of utility payments that local government loses 30 cents in taxes due to lowered valuations.
Representative Riecken said that she hoped that over 500 people will attend the hearing on November 28th at 6 pm in the Locust Room at the Centre.
It is very likely that well over 500 people will attend this hearing due to the household demographics of Evansville. The average household in this ville is approximately 2.1 persons, the average age is well over the national average, and the average household also has an annual income well under the national average. Thus there is a huge number of people who won’t go to the polls on election day, but who will attend this hearing, simply because they have ‘way too much skin in the game that is the future of their electricity costs. In other words, this ain’t gonna be pretty from where the Vectren folks sit.
Vectren says the fact its rates are the highest in the state is because other Indiana utilities have not yet spent the money to upgrade that they will have to eventually and that their rates will catch up to Vectren’s. Has any news outlet checked with the other utilities to see if this is true? If the Courier & Press, for instance, would take a brief holiday from its constant coverage of routine crime news and actually investigate something that would be of interest to their readers, we would know more about the truth of Vectren’s statements.
The CCO has done some looking into this. It is true that other utilities are under the same federal attainment rules as Vectren’s service area. All are planning to do something about it. We also spoke with Vectren about it. The range of dates that other areas will implement scrubber technology is from 8 to 15 years. The time to equalization ranges from just under ten years to never. All are anticipating rate increases of in the 50% – 100% range to comply. In the case of Henderson if their rates double in 10 years and Vectren’s do not change at all, Vectren will still be 50% more expensive. Then there is the possibility that the politics of 2012 will result in the relaxation of EPA standards which will to some extent get the late adopters sort of off the same hook that Vectren voluntarily conformed to.
The way to find out if Vectren’s statement is true is to find the data that compares the “cost per kilowatt” of the various generating facilities. Then you will be looking at the “efficiency” of each plant.
You will need to know the current cost per kilowatt for Vectren’s A.B. Brown Generating Station #1 and #2. You will need to know the cost per kilowatt for competing electrical generating units. Then you need to compare the units to see how similar they are, i.e. the manufacturer of the unit, its age, fuel source, emission control system, or lack thereof, whether or not the unit has Dense-Pack technology.
If there are producers out there operating virtually the same generators, and their cost per kilowatt is lower than Vectren’s, then they are operating more efficiently than Vectren without Dense-Pack.
If that is indeed the case, then Vectren needs to bring its efficiency level (cost per kilowatt) up to that of its competitors before it is allowed to add additional costs to consumer’s bills.
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BTW, this NOT the way to run a meeting:
http://youtu.be/F3f0_0D7JyU
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VECTREN CORPORATION
Vectren Corporation (Vectren) is an energy holding company. Vectren’s wholly owned subsidiary, Vectren Utility Holdings, Inc. (Utility Holdings), serves as the intermediate holding company for three operating public utilities: Indiana Gas Company, Inc. (Indiana Gas), Southern Indiana Gas and Electric Company (SIGECO) and the Ohio operations.
Utility Holdings also has other assets that provide information technology and other services to the three utilities.
Indiana Gas provides energy delivery services to over 570,000 natural gas customers located in central and southern Indiana.
SIGECO provides energy delivery services to over 142,000 electric customers and approximately 111,000 gas customers located near Evansville in southwestern Indiana.
The Ohio operations provide energy delivery services to approximately 314,000 natural gas customers located near Dayton in west central Ohio.
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Maybe the rate payers of Vectren need a rate reduction proposal to submit to the Indiana Utilities Regulatory Commission? How much money does Vectren spend lobbying the regulatory members? Where has our elected representatives been over the years while Vectren was sticking it to us? Why haven’t they been lobbying for us?
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