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Eisert: Electric Reliability Act protects Sun City ratepayers

Posted 1/25/22

Reliable and affordable electricity is essential for life in Arizona.

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Opinions

Eisert: Electric Reliability Act protects Sun City ratepayers

Posted

Reliable and affordable electricity is essential for life in Arizona.

The Electric Reliability Act — House Bill 2101 — ensures the State’s energy policy prioritizes reliability and consumer protection instead of allowing the same failed electric deregulated model that exists in other states to jeopardize Arizona’s proven standard in reliability, affordability and customer protection.

HB 2101 is about protecting Arizona ratepayers from the Texas- and California-style tried-and-failed policies of retail electric competition, or deregulation, by repealing old language that allowed for these risky policies. 

HB 2101 protects Arizona consumers and businesses from the increased rates and decreased reliability proven to come from the tried-and-failed policy called “retail competition,” or “re-regulation.” Most who oppose the bill have been saying it prevents consumer choice. Actually, much of the opposition to HB 2101 isn’t about so-called “consumer choice” — it’s about forcing renewables at any cost, providing a way to get the Green New Deal into Arizona.

HB 2101 maintains the Arizona-based regulatory structure that has served Arizona customers well for more than 100 years. With an obligation to serve customers in the defined service area, the utilities focus on expanding customer options to manage their energy use and meet their lifestyle needs, not providing deceptive incentives just to get them to sign on the dotted line.

Arizona has had two decades to see how deregulation, market restructuring or re-regulation over-promises and threatens economic stability. The 2000-01 Enron market manipulation scandal caused California’s deregulation experiment to collapse, and the Arizona courts ultimately invalidated the Arizona Corporation Commission’s deregulation rules. Current and previously deregulated states are often short on energy capacity, and when their systems are stressed by extreme heat or cold, they fail their customers and suffer disastrous ripple effects on families and businesses. All, while those systems cost customers more, both during the crisis as well as over time.

The Wall Street Journal reported that since 2004, Texas retail electric customers paid $28 billion more for electricity than they would have in a traditional system. That does not include the $127-plus billion in economic losses from the single event of the winter crisis. 

Just California and Texas? Deregulation in Montana caused the local utility to shed its generation assets, and after prices rose and energy capacity evaporated, Montana reversed course — and ratepayers are still footing the bill for the deregulation debacle. The Attorneys General in Illinois and Massachusetts sought to protect residential customers from the effects of competition in their states, including higher prices and predatory practices. In New York, the New York Public Utility Commission concluded in 2016 that customers paid competitive providers $820 million more for electric and gas service than they would have paid their incumbent utilities.

HB 2101 has cleared committee in the House and now must be passed in the House and Senate before going to the governor for signature. 

Send your representatives an email, give them a call, send a note, to vote in favor of HB 2101 and the well-being and protection of Arizona ratepayers. Those legislators are District 21 Sen. Rick Gray, Rgray@azleg.gov, 602-926-5413; District 21 Rep. Kevin Payne, Kpayne@azleg.gov, 602-926-4854; District 21 Rep. Beverly Pingerelli, Bpingerelli@azleg.gov, 602-926-3396; District 22 Sen. David Livingston, Dlivingston@azleg.gov, 602-926-4178; District 22 Rep. Frank Carroll, Fcarroll@azleg.gov, 602-926-3249; and District 22 Rep. Ben Toma, Btoma@azleg.gov, 602-926-3298.

Editor’s Note: Sun City resident Greg Eisert formerly served on the Sun City Home Owners Association board and was that body’s Governmental Affairs Committee chairman.