Back to Basics

Once again, we can see where the political parasites have inserted progressive social policies into utility bills without the hoopla of defending a new energy tax.

It appears that the California Energy Commission’s Research Development and Demonstration Division’s mandate to supports public interest energy research, development, and demonstration has gone awry. With the money trickling into supporting climate change which cannot be supported by a realistic look at the science and environmental causes which are more about providing income to researchers and research institutions than they are to supporting energy research for the common good.

Jumping off the PIER (Public Interest Energy Research)  …

The California Legislative Analyst’s office has performed an analysis which supports three major findings.

Much of your money has been wasted and produced no results …

• First, in evaluating the current program, we find that the CEC has not demonstrated that there has been a substantial payoff to date from the state’s investment of more than $700 million in ratepayer funds.

We find that the CEC has generally funded projects in line with the broad categories of eligible investments that are set out in statute (such as promoting ‘energy efficiency’ and ‘demand response’ strategies). However, state law establishes several goals for the PIER program, including the creation of tangible ratepayer benefits. While some particular PIER-sponsored research projects have served these goals, CEC has not demonstrated that the majority of the projects allocated PIER funding
by CEC has produced similar benefits.

We think that the state should continue to receive funding …

• “Second, we find that the legislative and regulatory enactment of several new ambitious energy policy objectives has created an energy landscape that differs greatly from the one that existed in 1996, when the PIER program was created.”

“In order to help address technological barriers which may prevent attainment of these state goals, we find that there is a role for the state to continue to support public interest energy research beyond the 2012 sunset date.”

And even while we acknowledge that we screwed up, we need to go forward with a reformed system …

• “Third, if the Legislature decides that there should be a continuing state role in this area of research, we find that improvements could be made to the implementation of this role, including by tightening funding eligibility parameters and changing the process by which research funding is allocated.”

What they need to do is to remove political cronyism from the funding process and stop handing out money to support progressive causes which do little to benefit the taxpayer and are simply ways to keep progressives employed.

Condemning the Process …

PIER Has Funded a Broad Spectrum of Research—Perhaps Too Broad. A broad array of research has been funded over time under PIER within each of the six allowable investment categories discussed earlier. The PIER-funded research projects we have reviewed generally fit within these allowable categories.

Today’s blog entry is a cautionary tale and one I hope will be somewhat instructive to those who are considering the latest and greatest bundled service from their cable companies.

In my case, the offer was to combine my high-definition cable service, my telephone service and my Internet service into a single package which was marginally cheaper than purchasing the same services individually from the provider. Of course, the equipment rental and premium programming were extra costs – as are the ever-increasing taxes and fees; many of which seem arbitrary and not imposed by government tariff. All allegedly delivered by state-of-the-art fiber systems – except for that last street hook-up which is crappy coaxial cable with the cheap crimp-on aluminum connectors, buried deep in moisture laden holes in someone’s yard.

If I had decided to save this trivial amount, it would have been for naught today – as I would have sat here for hours without phone, Internet or television to amuse myself.

The real question I need to ask is: what am I willing to pay for access? To be able to work from home at all hours, to call people when necessary and to record my favorite television shows with my time-shifting TiVo recorder? To know that an interruption in one service will not leave me sitting in electronic darkness? Or, heaven forbid – have multiple communications options should there have been a true area-wide emergency.

Reporting the outage over the Internet was both time-consuming and frustrating. After waiting twenty or so minutes to work through the queue and dealing with an initial agent who could not comprehend what I was asking – the matter was escalated at my request. Here is a portion of the chat log for your amusement. It appears that some of the responses may be computer-generated as the sequence was somewhat wonky.

Ruth:    Please wait, while the problem is escalated to another analyst

Christian:    Thank you for contacting xxx. At the end of our chat you will be given the option of taking a brief survey.

My name is Christian. Please give me a moment while I access your account.

Christian:    Hello, how are you today?

Stephen_:    I want to know the cause of the area-wide outage on cable television and an estimated time for a fix. Thank you.

Christian:    I am sorry to tell you, we are currently experiencing an outage in your area. Our technicians are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

At this time, there is no known estimated time of repair and we just have received the report of the outage but the system does not show the cause of this outage.

I apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience. We are confident that our engineers will have this issue resolved shortly, but if you are still experiencing this issue in 24 hours, please contact us again. We’ll be happy to provide an update to you at that time.

Even the process of contacting the service provider via telephone to report the outage was interesting.