The glaslight industry

Mechanical inefficiency cannot be blamed an the region’s age or geographi¬cal deficiencies; it is the result of administrative decisions. Two generations ago, Samuel Insull, the man who did for electricity what Henry Ford did for the automobile, showed the power industry that it was much more efficient to use large generating plants serving as many people as possible. No one believed him at first, and it might appear that many private company executives in New England still don’t. On average, the public utilities companies of the country serve three times as many people as do the companies of New England, and there are more than one and a half times as many people for every generating plant. This means for New England more executives, more plants and lines to maintain, more secretaries, more maintenance workers, more pensions and insurance, and higher labor costs per customer. New Englanders are paying to perpetuate a quaint private industry organization that is not nearly as charming as a covered bridge and much more expensive.
Attempts at consolidation have been made, but the pace is slow. In some places in New England, covered bridges have rotted away before the public realized what was happening. It is unlikely, however, that any private utility in the region will collapse, for they are protected by the state regulatory agencies and an apathetic public. Almost all of the region’s utilities make the maximum profit allowed by law, and a few are considerably above the prescribed limit. Blackstone Valley Electric Co. of Rhode Island earned in 1965 a return Of 9.34 per cent, almost twice the limit.
Only Vermont’s Public Service Board seems to take seriously its Obligation to set reasonable rates. New Hampshire and Connecticut appear indifferent at best, and the regulatory agencies in Maine, Massachusetts and The Maine and Massachusetts agencies have been hostile, almost insulting, to recent appearances by public-power groups.
Part of this situation results from the fact that none of the agencies has money or staff to do an adequate job. Most are so short of skilled help that they are forced to accept company operating statistics as a basis for deter¬mining rates. Unless the public demands it, the regulatory agencies are not likely to hire qualified accountants or engineers, and the prevailing public attitude is that the cost of electricity has formed a triumvirate with death and taxes. The result is that the regulatory agencies are permitting monopo¬lies to earn good profits with equipment and organizational structures that would drive them to the wall if they were faced with even moderately ag¬gressive competition. Allowing each utility exclusive control of its sales ter¬ritory prevents wasteful duplication of plants and lines, but it also creates an attitude of status quo complacency. Creative regulatory policies could im¬pose penalties for continued use of outmoded steam plants, instead of allow¬ing them to be included in the rate base.
However, conventional steam plants have had their day in New England. After 1969, the region’s power industry will most likely build only power-cost nuclear plants. It already has an experimental nuclear plant, Yankee, at Rowe, Mass., and five others are either under construction or committed. These five are part of what the private companies have dubbed their “Big 11 Power Loop”; the other six installations consist of five conventional steam plants and a pumped storage plant. All eleven are scheduled to be finished by the end of 19′72 and will be connected by 9oo miles of 345-kilovolt transmission lines. The cost of the project is about S9oo million, and the plants will provide about 6.3 million kilowatts of power.
The narre “Big 11 Power Loop”-but not the plants or transmission lines -is a gimmick, pure and simple. No engineering plan or study supports the location, type or design of the plants an a system-wide basis. It all started with
a Full-page newspaper advertisement announcing the “Loop” and implying that the whole thing was thought out well in advance. The campaign, carried an with television commercials costing about S200,ooo a year, was devised by the private companies’ trade organization, the Electric Coordinating Council of New En¬gland (ECCNE), in response to the threat of the federal government’s Dickey¬Lincoln School hydroelectric project. . . .
The darr at Dickey is the practical reality left over from the dream of harnessing the tides in Passamaquoddy Bay at the eastern tip of Maine. . . . By 198o it will provide only i per cent of the area’s electrical requirements. But it will probably bring with it a Northeast Power Commission to market the power. It is expected that the cheaper power of Dickey, combined with the Thereupon, the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners contracted for low-sulfur oil to burn in the city’s generators. The only oil then available came from the Mideast, so the commissioners took that. industrycurrent The Arab oil embargo in October knocked out 48 per cent of the city’s fuel supply overnight, and its only firm source of electricity was the federal Bonneville Dam Project along the Columbia River, which sent power south via the Pacific Intertie to supply io per cent of the city’s needs. But Jong periods of drought in the Northwest had been followed by an early and massive cold wave. Streams that fed the Columbia froze, drastically reducing the runoff that supplied the Bonne¬ville reservoirs. business current Coming at a time when its customers in the Northwest were drawing heavily an Bonneville for additional heat, the reduction in power forced it to cut all service to the Southland.