Perhaps I am naïve, but to be more effective it seems interveners would do well to understand motives of profit-driven enterprises and their customers. Consider, for example, this recent article in Midwest Energy News lamenting CenterPoint Energy’s withdrawal from decoupling. You may recall a post I made eons ago where I described the perverse impact of decoupling on prices for consumers. Allow me to recap. Utilities have fixed cost of hardware and labor to deliver energy to customers – poles, wires, pipes, transformers, compressors, trucks, etc. This stuff makes up the rate base and fixed cost of energy delivery. They…
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