Lowering Costs for Electricity

* Re “Easing California’s Kilowatt High,” by Michael Peevey and Michael Burke, Commentary, April 10:

I believe the authors have neglected some hidden factors, and the idea they have proposed could only lead to disaster.

The electrical utilities in California are some of the best run companies in the United States. Why are their rates higher than some other companies? Very simple. First, they are required to have the lowest smog-causing emissions, and second, they are required to purchase high-cost electricity from anyone outside the regular utilities that have excess electricity to sell.

The idea proposed in the article is to buy electricity from utilities outside the state that don’t have to meet stiff emissions requirements. You can imagine how long this will last. As soon as our neighbors found out that all that smoke and smog was caused by making electricity for California they would embargo electricity from going out of state. If this happened several years down the road, we would have to shut down some of our industries while we built enough capacity to handle our growth.

Solutions that sound too simple usually are. We like being smog-free, but we must be willing to pay for it: Our neighbors won’t pay for it.

KEITH R. BRONSON

Oxnard

* This column is the most misleading article I’ve ever read on this subject. Their cavalier destruction of the utility industry ignores important issues. If we buy power from a Colorado or Ohio utility and their transmission lines go down during a snowstorm, our power will disappear. There is no casual switching to another source. Our local utility-generating facilities (deemed stranded-investments) would of course be mothballed, the staff fired and incapable of being put back in line. Meanwhile these same people want to get the use of the transmission lines and in-city distribution systems for next to nothing. Don’t worry about upkeep, modernization, earthquake preparedness all of which cost money. The high kilowatt cost of electricity in California is, among other things, due to the cost of buying geothermal and wind-generated power as mandated by the PUC, taxes higher than in many other states, etc. Solar and wind generated power is available sporadically and other power generating systems must be on hand when this power is not available. In the end, cheaper produced power may be an expensive folly.

ALVIN B. KAUFMAN, PE

Woodland Hills

* Bravo to Robert Phillips and Steven Erie (“Political Piracy at the Expense of DWP Customers,” Opinion, April 9)! More than any other past Los Angeles administration, Mayor Richard Riordan’s sees the DWP as a convenient cash cow, there merely to pay for impossible campaign promises.

Let the transfer end and ratepayers see some responsibility in city government

GLEN W. REDMAN

Los Angeles