If nothing else, you have to admire our electric company AEP for their chutzpah. A couple months back, you may recall, AEP agreed with the PUCO that they had overcharged many central Ohio customers in 2009. But instead of issuing full refunds of the overcharge, AEP wondered if we might allow them to keep all the excess profit in exchange for a lower-than-maximum rate increase next year. What a shit sandwich!
This Tuesday night we had a fairly severe ice storm which caused a lot of property damage. It also knocked out power to over 180,000 homes. The Buster Gammons estate was among those to go dark. We spent a chilly night, but our power came back on by mid-morning. Others weren't so lucky. As of this Friday morning there were still 16,000 homes without power. And it went down to 7 degrees last night.
Meanwhile, it's hard to tell whether AEP has spent more time in making repairs or in congratulating themselves. Their spokespeople tell us they've performed virtual miracles, which they credit to their "aggressive program of line maintenance", meaning they sneak onto your property when you're not home and cut down your trees. (AEP's fantasy would be a world absent all vegetation, everything flat and paved.) They issue foggy feel-good statements like, "At this time, we're projecting with 90% certainty that 95% of our customers will have 98% of their power restored by next week." Huh?
Not that there's an alternative, but we cope with far too many power outages. It's been that way for as long as I've lived here. A good sideways fart'll knock out the power for a couple hours. In 2008, the remnants of Hurricane Ike turned off our lights for 4-5 days.
Wait -- maybe there is an alternative. Most of these problems stem from the fragile, antiquated delivery system. Like most places, we get our juice from overhead wires. From the power plant to the substation to the subdivision to the home, it's poles and wires up in the air all the way. And they flap around in the breeze and ice forms on them and trees fall on them. And we bitch and moan and freeze, and AEP spends a small fortune on a temporary fix. And then it happens again.
But there are some places where electricity is delivered by underground wires, at least in residential areas. My sister lives in such a neighborhood in a Cleveland suburb. Some new developments around here have underground wiring. It doesn't eliminate power outages, but it sure as hell reduces the number to a very, very few. And it means the utility company doesn't aggressively "prune" your landscaping.
Could we retrofit the entire city and take it all underground? Sure. So why don't we? Cost, or rather, fear of cost. AEP's position is that the costs would be prohibitive, which is code for "We ain't payin' for it!" Undoubtedly, it would be a very expensive proposition, and we probably shouldn't expect a utility company to pay the full cost of conversion. They should pay plenty, but how about if we help 'em and share the cost? It's in our mutual interests to improve the system.
What if each AEP residential customer paid a one-time surcharge of $500 to aid in converting to an underground delivery system? You could pay it all at once or spread it over a full year at $42 extra per month. How many customers does AEP have? I don't know. Would $500 be enough? Don't know that either. But let's play with a couple numbers. Take just those 180,000 homes that lost power Tuesday night. A $500 surcharge on each of them would generate $90 million. That oughta help bury a few wires.
But I'm just a wild-eyed idealist. Almost certainly it's another of Buster's busted pipe dreams. I'm heading out now to stock up on candles.
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