Given the success of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), a municipal utility in the restructured power markets, why not have the state of California set up a public utility?
The pluses and minuses of public power have been debated in California for over fifty years. University of California economists Gilbert and Kahn have found that restructuring of power markets internationally has often been in response to the inefficiencies of governments buying and building power plants. One example can be found in California when the Department of Water Resources attempted to build renewable geothermal power plants in the early 1980s. They not only built very expensive power plants but managed to locate them where there was insufficient steam. Generally, existing public utilities like LADWP have managed to have lower costs than investor-owned utilities such as PG&E and SCE because they pay fewer taxes and have preferential access to low-cost Federal power: LADWP used its cheap financing to build power plants in excess of need, which burdened their ratepayers with excess costs for many years. LADWPs market share of surplus generation, however, allowed the utility to r
Related Questions
- Given the success of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), a municipal utility in the restructured power markets, why not have the state of California set up a public utility?
- Why does the City of Henderson appoint a Commission to manage the Henderson Water Utility rather than manage it as a part of City government, like the Gas Department?
- What is the phone number for the Department of Water and Power in Los Angeles CA?
