The Burlingame Voice

Climate at the Pump

I'm just back from a couple of weeks in New England that included a goodly amount of driving--and filling up my gas tank.  The price difference between there and here is astounding even to someone like me who is used to a significant differential.  I paid $2.19 for regular.  Put that in your mental carburetor.

So it was with gratitude that I returned to a San Mateo County Times headline on Thursday that read "Brown's priorities defeated".  I would link to it, but you guessed it, even putting the exact title in the Times and Merc website doesn't yield the article.  No matter since the two reporters did an abysmal job of reporting their own opinions instead of the news.  Here is one fact-based sentence from the article

The governor's infrastructure plan seeks to raise $3.5 billion annually by boosting the gasoline tax 6 cents per gallon, increasing the diesel tax by 11 cents and increasing the vehicle registration fee by $65.

For the real complete story, we turn to yesterday's Wall Street Journal editorial

Cap and trade has raised fuel costs, though it effect is hard to isolate from other environmental mandates.  The Western States Petroleum Association last year projected that cap and trade would add 16 to 76 cents per gallon to the retail price of gas based on data from the Air Resources Board.

In 2006 Californians paid about 23 cents more per gallon than the national average due to higher gas taxes and the state's reformulated fuel regulations.  The price premium increased to 41 cents last year and spiked to $1.14 in May after several in-state refineries experienced problems.  The average gas price in California now is $3.22....

I could go on with the market data and the effect of the ethanol requirements on people's cars, but you get the point.  That is why 21 Democratic assembly members also voted against Brown this week.  So what does he do?  "Mr. Brown vowed to use regulation to end-run the legislature."  Oh goody.

Electric Bounce

The electricity went out twice this morning for short periods causing a bit of havoc for contractors and work at home information workers.  The automated phone calls from PG&E were somewhat helpful--at least you know they know.  

Water You Thinking?

In the daily barrage of water news and drought legislation, the Wall Street Journal is doing a better job than most newspapers on the Big Picture.  On April 27, it covered the 1.4 trillion gallons of water that have been released into the Bay since 2008 to keep the delta smelt from going extinct, but which isn't really working.  Turns out dry conditions leave the water clearer and makes it easier for the little guys to be eaten.  Regardless, the longfin smelt, steelhead and Chinook salmon will continue to get a good deal of water.

On May 6, the Journal covered the slow move to smart water meters.  Smart electric meters were not without their controversy noted here while smart gas meters seemed to happen magically in B'game.  Smart water meters cost about $300 each plus the cost of the network that makes them smart and the savings from human meter readers is offset by higher maintenance.  If you have never looked inside the concrete box out at your median strip, it looks like this.

 

I have no idea if mine is smart or not, but it doesn't look like much and I do know I've never been alerted to a website or portal where I can watch usage by time of day or look for continuous usage at night (a sign of a leak).  San Francisco is wrapping up a five-year, $60 million program to install 178,000 smart meters so some EssEffers will be able to do that and compare against their neighbors (controversy awaits).  The Journal notes

The data show that about a quarter of customers have some sort of leak, commonly in toilets, irrigation systems or water-softener systems, says Dave Wallenstein, who oversees the district’s smart-meter program. “One family tried to conserve water but didn’t realize a pipe was broken until they logged in,” he says.

In most cases, though, it’s too early to tell how much all this data contributes to conservation. For one thing, water managers haven’t figured out how to separate the impact of their other conservation efforts, such as incentives for water-efficient appliances and drought-resistant plants, from the impact of smart meters.

Districts also are still working out ways to use the data more effectively in conjunction with other information. For instance, the East Bay district is looking at how to use property records and weather data to figure out how much water individual homes should need each month, so that it can give consumers that information.

More disconcerting is the May 9 article that reports on a lawsuit filed by something called Restore Hetch Hetchy that seeks to demolish O'Shaughnessy dam in Yosemite.  But

Hetch Hetchy supplies the Bay Area with pristine water, which requires little treatment and energy for pumping, at low cost. Its hydropower is also cheap and helps offset the city’s pricey renewables such as solar.

San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, now a U.S. senator, called Hetch Hetchy water her “birthright” and proclaimed that she would “‘do all in my power” to fight the teardown. “All this is for an expanded campground?” Ms. Feinstein mused. “It’s dumb, dumb, dumb.”

I agree.  Water you thinking?

Update:  see the comment below for more info on our meters.  Here is the same meter cleaned off so you can see the gauge.

Green Power...or Not?

For better or worse, I know a lot more about regulated utilities' business models, accounting practices and competitive responses than most lay persons.  I learned it in the telecom industry, but parts of it are transferable.  My first job out of college was for a telephone company and the first thing my first boss had me do was read all of the tariffs that formed the description and pricing of all the telecom services.  Boring, but quite a learning experience.

When I read that the government wants to help green power competitors compete with PG&E my antennae go up and start to quiver.  This SM County Times article did just that

In the latest sign that a Bay Area renewable energy trend is picking up steam, San Mateo County is taking a close look at buying its own power on the open market, instead of relying on PG&E, in a bid to lower its greenhouse gas emissions.

The county is exploring whether to establish a community choice aggregation program, which allows local governments to create their own energy portfolios that rely more on alternative sources like wind and solar and less on fossil fuels. On Tuesday, the board of supervisors will vote on allocating $300,000 toward a technical study of the proposal.

Digging into the details we find

The county anticipates that the program will lower rates for consumers and generate savings that can be plowed into local renewable energy projects.

Where can I go to take that bet?  Looking further we learn

Marin Clean Energy and Sonoma Clean Power have seen promising results. Marin forecasts that its basic package, which consists of 50 percent renewable energy, will be $80.14 a month for a typical user in 2015, compared to $81.58 a month for PG&E power that is 22 percent renewable.

Marin customers can pay more for premium plans -- $84.77 for power that is 100 percent renewable and $107.92 for energy delivered entirely from local solar farms.

Until battery technology takes a super quantum leap in performance and price, the "100 percent renewable" advertising slogan is really just that.  Neither wind nor rain can stop the postal service, but the lack of one and the presence of the other certainly stops green power sometimes.

Leave it to the IBEW Local to find the flaw

Local 1245, said Marin Clean Energy's approach is flawed, relying too much on renewable energy certificates to meet its alternative energy targets. These certificates, purchased from renewable energy suppliers, allow the group to take credit for renewable energy generation without actually buying it.

We will have to watch this one.  $300K is fine for a technical study, but I have to ask who is doing the "business study" that will cover the taxpayers' interests?  It all smells a little like high-cost rail.

H2 No - Part 3 Following the Hetch Hetchy

The Mercury News-Time has a very interesting front page piece on the drought and its ramifications on wildlife, electricity and people.  It is well worth the read.  Here are a couple of important points stitched together from the piece

Even though it’s first along the river, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which manages Hetch Hetchy, can’t just take all the water it wants. It is required to release water downstream so irrigation districts in Modesto and Turlock with older claims on the river get the water they are guaranteed.  These mighty districts — whose canals extend for more than 400 miles — sit atop the Tuolumne River’s human pecking order because they made their claim in 1887, under a water rights system that emerged with the early settlement of California known as “first in time, first in right.” Their access to water trumps San Francisco’s. But they rank below the rights of wildlife, which are protected by federal law — a major source of conflict in the region’s age-old fight for water.

And the impact on electricity and revenue

Thirty miles from Hetch Hetchy, it plunges down a 1,000-foot ridge at the tiny town of Moccasin, an old stagecoach stop, where it is funneled into turbines to generate 1.6 billion kilowatt hours of power a year.

As a low-cost, no-pollution energy generator, hydroelectricity is a coveted power source. The Moccasin turbines generate so much energy, with such regularity, that they power much of San Francisco — from Muni buses and schools to the airport and port. Electricity is also sold to irrigation districts and on the open market.

This year’s low flow, however, means less electricity, Ritchie said. Normally, these turbines produce $7.7 million worth of energy to sell to irrigation districts and another $8.3 million on the open energy market. This year, there’s enough to power the city, but the commission expects to sell only $1 million to $2 million to irrigation districts — and nothing else.

If you read almost to the end you will get the story on the salmon impact as well, which we touched on here.  I haven't heard anything about B'game rationing...yet.  Here is the Pulgas Water Temple--our local shrine to H2O.

High Cost Rail - Part 101 Scrap and Fade

It is a pleasant change from the usual San Jose Mercury News-San Mateo County Times' "progressive" editorials when they attack the High Cost Rail project.  The Friday piece was a gem

Enough with the high-speed rail lunacy.

The Legislature needs to derail the budget deal reportedly cobbled together Thursday by Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic leaders that calls for spending 25 percent of future cap-and-trade revenue on California's high-speed rail boondoggle.

The Legislature at a minimum has to re-establish its own credibility in having passed AB 32, the greenhouse gas reduction law, in 2006. But it also should withdraw its support for the bullet train and tell the governor to give it up.

They go on to suggest

The Legislature also has backed high-speed rail, but it should draw the line at siphoning away cap-and-trade revenue for it. Brown wants the train as his legacy, but this scheme smacks of desperation.

Instead he and the Legislature should go back to voters to ask if they support the stripped down bullet train now planned at exponentially higher cost.

One can only hope that another vote would happen since that would result in the boondoggle being scrapped and fading away.  But what is the chance of that happening?  Not good.  A better possibility is more critical rulings in lawsuits.  Another suit popped up recently described here and reminds us of one of my hot buttons--the quake threat

Among the most serious allegations in the lawsuit are that the new EIR purposefully ignored the rail authority’s own report about the riskiness of its route.

On Sept. 12, 2013, in response to a California Public Records Act request by Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design, the rail authority released an internal report on geologic and seismic hazards facing the Fresno-Bakersfield route.

According to the lawsuit, the report  “concluded that the risks of ground rupture, seismically induced ground deformations, shallow groundwater, soil corrosivity, and land subsidence were moderate to high along the Section alignment. The Report determined that most of these geotechnical hazards are distributed across the Central Valley or run perpendicular to the section alignment.”

But the new EIR did not acknowledge the rail authority’s own findings that geologic and seismic hazards were probably unavoidable on the planned route. Instead, the EIR concluded such risks were only in “localized areas.”

Opponents must keep pointing at the Emperor's Clothes since the emperor ain't listening.

PG&E Rate Proposal

I've been meaning to note the proposed rate changes that PG&E wants to make since last week.  Electricity is in the news from Tesla's great financial results and B'game's desire for some car charging stations to electrifying Caltrain.  Electons are newsworthy as is paying for them.  The Times had this piece a week ago

San Francisco-based PG&E's proposed rate structure would reduce the number of payment tiers from the current four to two, a move that would result in higher rates for low-usage customers, the utility says. The proposed rate structure also would allow customers to opt into what's called "time-of-use" pricing, in which they would pay less for electricity if they shift their usage to off-peak hours.

I'm in favor of "time-of-use" pricing.  It's motivation to spread the power load through the day.  As to the rate band changes, I'm skeptical that the "consumer group" the article quotes is really looking out for all consumers.  After watching them for years, I believe they have a different agenda than the overall common good nor do I think they fullly understand some issues they push.  With the recent attack on a electric sub-station in San Jose, I'm hoping PG&E spends on reliability and capacity. 

Gas Meter Upgrade Magic

We were out of town last week and I got home to discover a PG&E Service Report that showed PG&E had come by and installed a new gas meter all on their own initiative.  I guess that is good.  If PG&E thinks it needs changing, then I definitely want it changed!  The open question is how they did it and figured out to restart my water heater and whatever else needed starting without me being here?  I'm not sure since my old house has two meters from back in the days of WW2 when it was a duplex, but I like it.  The new meter also has the smart meter attached as before.  That smart meter accuracy debate seems to have quieted down.

Downtown Power Outage

There a pretty big power outage near the Avenue this morning after last night's storm.  Safeway and Walgreen's are closed, but Mollie Stone's has power.  The AT&T generator is up and running so landline phone service is fine--as usual.  Rough start to the work week.

Middle Eastern Reflections

I had to hop out to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and back this week for work.  It's 15 hours each way and gives one plenty of time for reflection.  When I am overseas I often ponder how the place de jour is the same and different than B'game.  The UAE is, as its name implies, a combination of historically independent emirates--notably Dubai and Abu Dhabi.  As you can see from the photo below, they are brand new cities rising from the desert.  A central location and gold trading were the historical advantages.  Today oil, the central location and an open economy with no taxes are the fuel for amazing growth.  Nothing in the picture below existed 15 years ago!  And there is another city just like it about 60 miles away.

So I was left to ponder how California is reacting--competing, really--in this global economy.  The Dubai airport took over the #2 slot for international traffic from Paris de Gaulle last month and expects to dethrone Heathrow in 2015.  Governor Moonbeam, aided and abetted by some clueless voters, is busy raising tax rates.  The newspapers are reminding everyone to make those big purchases before the sales tax rate rises next week.  The guy in the article says it's not a big deal because people are used to the increases--evidence of another clueless voter--myopic and under-educated.

And we can say the same about energy costs.  Today's Wall Street Journal editorial titled "California's Coming Green-Outs" discusses the 2006 law that requires our utilities to get 20% of their power from renewables by 2010 which was then increased to 33% by 2020.  There are just a couple of wrinkles

California residents and businesses already pay rates that are 25% to 60% higher than the national average.  Excessive energy costs have helped to obliterate the state's manufacturing base.

And the push for legislated percentages of renewables will only exacerbate that exodus.  Meanwhile we are competing with the UAE, Oman, Quatar, Singapore and the next wave of developing nations.  We have our advantages for sure, but why are so many of our weaknesses self-inflicted?  It is going to be interesting (scary) to see if the "barbell economy" can carry its weight.