I hated it when we lost our public utility, Public Service of Colorado, and sold to a private investor named Xcel Energy back in 2000. Rates went up immediately, service stayed the same for a while, so it just seemed like handing over more money just so a corporation could profit.

After 25 years, it's now come out that they've been lax on maintaining their grid system. Four years ago, a major fire was caused by downed power lines and high winds, and Xcel got the crap sued out of them. The state demanded they come up with a solution, and the best they could do was to shut off consumer power whenever the winds get too high. They're calling it a Public Safety Power Shutoff.

Yup. I was without power from 9:45am on Wednesday until 2:30pm Thursday, with only a one day notice. It's possible they may not be getting accurate weather info since the current administration isn't funding NOAA fully, but they also decided to do another PSPS Friday morning at 5:45am. This time, power will be off until Saturday at 6pm. I had to book hotel rooms for my family.

Xcel isn't obligated to repay me for a freezer full of meat, because they argue it's covered by homeowner's insurance. My homeowner's insurance only covers accidental power outages, not planned ones. It's crystal clear to me Xcel wants to protect stockholders, not customers.

Sorry, long rant, very frustrated, but I'm hearing other stories around the US about going back to municipal utilities. How is power handled where you live? US or outside the US, I'd like to know why something so important is owned by private investors.

Privatization is just a dodge to funnel money to people, usually friends of the advocates of the proposal. I’d be interested to find any examples where privatization has resulted in better service and lower (or even steady) costs.

52 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

the best they could do was to shut off consumer power whenever the winds get too high

This is apparently the first domino NIST faced that cascaded to the failure of their timescale.

Privatization of what should be public utilities is a major bugbear of mine. It just makes no sense. How can making a profit from them make it better for the domestic consumer? Since water/sewage, for example, was privatized in the UK, the infrastructure has become dilapidated and now needs BILLIONS spending on it to repair it. They are claiming poverty. Why haven't they put some of the profit aside for maintenance and upgrades over the last decades since privatization? Is privatisation just a gravy train, where they sap from it and, when it runs dry, expect the consumer to 'top it up' through continuously higher pricing?

The future is even more ominous for the domestic consumer, with the massive data companies cutting shifty backdoor deals with utilities to reduce their ongoing energy, water and land use costs for their data centres. This can only mean that the consumer will bear the brunt of that increase in the form of reduced resources and higher bills.

The main issue with faceless, investor-owned utilities is that there can be no personal accountability when big issues arise from bad or unethical decisions. They just get a new board of directors and pretend they've "learnt their lesson".

Privatisation is a sibling of 'trickle down' economics. Privatisation was supposed to improve economic efficiency, but guess who gets the benefits of that efficiency?

Edited Sunday at 08:14 AM3 days by StringJunky
added stuff

Difficult decision whether to post this in Phi's thread or swansont's thread.

7 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Privatization of what should be public utilities is a major bugbear of mine. It just makes no sense. How can making a profit from them make it better for the domestic consumer?

It never seems to, but it plays on the narrative that government is incompetent, and somehow private enterprise is incredibly efficient. One thing the escapades of DOGE in the US showed was that this is far from true, even though you can cherry-pick individual instances of problems. They imply that these are typical rather than being outliers.

8 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Privatisation was supposed to improve economic efficiency, but guess who gets the benefits of that efficiency?

As Phi’s example showed, sometimes the “efficiency” is cutting preventative maintenance or similar necessary tasks, which initially shows up as savings but always ends up costing more. Services are cut, costs go up.

31 minutes ago, swansont said:

As Phi’s example showed, sometimes the “efficiency” is cutting preventative maintenance or similar necessary tasks, which initially shows up as savings but always ends up costing more. Services are cut, costs go up.

Yes, neglected stuff is always going to cost more later on to remedy. DOGE just proved that its planners are fiscally incompetent. I find it interesting that hyped individuals, like Musk, inevitably fall off a credibility-cliff. They just don't know how far to push their luck and yet still maintain their public 'aura'.

Edited Sunday at 04:42 PM2 days by StringJunky