Are You Prepared To Pay More For Electricity?

Last week, President Obama announced plans to confront the growing threat of climate change.  He wants to cut carbon pollution by reducing the use of coal to produce electricity.  ”Carbon pollution is contributing to a higher risk of asthma attacks and more frequent and severe storms, floods, heat waves, and wildfires, driving up food prices and threatening our communities.” 

Almost 2/3 of Nebraska’s energy is produced by coal.  Mr. President, what will happen to our electricity prices if you are successful in reducing the use of generating units that use our cheapest resource?  Won’t that drive up food prices and threaten our communities? 

A researcher just published a new study that says chlorofluorocarbons are to blame for global warming since the 1970’s.  By demonstrating the link between CFCs, ozone depletion and temperature changes in the Antarctic, Professor Qing-Bin Lu was able to draw almost perfect correlation between rising global surface temperatures and CFCs in the atmosphere.  Please see May 30^th’s complete article at www.sciencedaily.com.

My point is….one study says this, another says that.   Think of it this way:  there’s a strong correlation between the crowing of a rooster and sunrise.  It doesn’t mean his crowing made the sun come up.  However, if locked in a dark room, one might use the rooster’s crow as an indicator that sunrise has occurred.   We believe a study that best fits our own value system.  We see things not as THEY ARE, but as WE ARE. 

What if the science is not as solid as some would have us believe (we are locked in a dark room).  The correlation between CO2 levels and temperature has been disputed on both sides over the past  40 years.  How sound is the science?  If Dr. Lu has found an independent variable that correlates much better with global temperatures than does carbon, I think we should consider it a valid predictor (the rooster crowing at sunrise) until someone can find a better one.

Ask yourself what will happen if you open your electric bill and it’s three times more than it used to be for the same amount of kilowatt hours AFTER Obama pushed his climate agenda all the way through congress.  Will you blame Dawson Power? 

I’m not against a greener planet.  I’m against pushing an agenda so hard and so fast, that we can’t recover from the negative financial impact it creates on our families, our farms, our communities, and Nebraska.  The price of electricity affects EVERYTHING.  

Gwen Kautz, General Manager

Courtesy of KNOP-TV in North Platte. For more information about Nebraska Water Balance Alliance, please visit the website at www.nebraskawaterbalance.com

Dawson Power Mixes Water And Electricity With Interesting Results

Removing irrigated acres could have a significant impact on our economy...

Two years ago, the Dawson Public Power board and management conducted a strategic planning effort to help the District identify threats and opportunities as we looked into the future.  One of the threats identified was the current practice of water management entities in the state buying up water rights, thereby reducing irrigated acres for the purpose of enhancing stream flow.

‘Significant impact’

This practice is being widely used on the Republican River Basin and now more recently on the Platte River in the areas that have been identified by the Department of Natural Resources as over or fully appropriated.  These parcels of land in essence become dryland and obviously produce less crop.  Our first inclination was to look at impacts on the District for stranded investment -- electric lines which were built to serve irrigation load that would be no longer used.  But as we examined the issue further we realized that the loss of crop production really has a huge impact on the rural agriculture economy in the areas affected.  This particular water management practice has significant impact on our farmers, agri-businesses, banks, counties, schools, and small towns in our service area.

Looking at the numbers

 The District wanted to examine this issue further and commissioned an Economic Impact study to be done by the Bureau of Business Research of the University of Nebraska Lincoln.  We have just received the preliminary results of the study and I will share with you some of the highlights.

The study area is Lincoln, Dawson, and Buffalo counties within the District service area.  Two scenarios were developed.  The first was a reduction of irrigated acres of 3,500 and the second was a reduction of 18,600 acres, both feasible objectives under current water management policy in place.  2010 average yields and pricing from the 2009 Agricultural Outlook were used in the model.

The direct annual impact of a reduction of crop sales, impact on business receipts, impacts on workers and wages along with loss of tax revenues were examined.

	Annual change in dollars per...
Economic Measure	3,500 acres removed	18,600 acres removed
Business receipts	-$2,229,000	-$11,847,000
Labor income	-$694,000	-$3,690,000
Employment	-26	-138

So what does this all mean? 

In my opinion, because of multi-state compacts and endangered species demands, water managers in the state of Nebraska are very focused on maintaining stream flows and have enacted regulations, such as irrigation reduction, to meet their objectives.  In that process, sufficient economic analysis was not done to develop understanding of the consequences that this type of regulation has on the local economy.  Maybe a cost benefit analysis should be required to enact such regulation in the future.  At the very least both environmental and economic benefits of changing water consumption need to be considered to help identify policies which yield the highest net benefit for all Nebraska residents.

Nebraska has been blessed with world class water resources.  Instead of fighting over who gets the water in the streams and rivers which are the remnants of the hydrological cycle, efforts need to be made to refocus on the complete water cycle and study the opportunities a water balance consumption model can bring.  Maybe it’s time for the next evolution of water policy development in Nebraska?

Until next time…

Robert Heinz, General Manager

Water Technology At Work

COURTESY OF KNOP -- www.knopnews2.com (Jacqueline Skarda)



For the full story, please go to this link: Water Technology At Work!

Nebraska Water Balance Alliance:  THREE GOALS
1.  Sound Groundwater Management
2.  Working Rivers
3.  Stable, Vibrant Nebraska Economy

The Memory Of A Paper Trail

The other day a business associate from another company asked me for our rate information for irrigation. Our electric rates are public so it was easy to comply with his request – REALLY EASY.  He had the data in hand within minutes of his request.  Then I stopped to think about the “before computer life” I used to live. 

Email has been revolutionary in the world of business communication. The use of email within a business can greatly increase productivity for employees. Although it cannot and should not replace all face-to-face communication and others forms of communication, internal email usage can cover many areas within the business.

Just a decade or so earlier, this request would have required paper, a copy machine, an envelope, ink, a stamp, and human handling by about 5 different people. Today it requires about 3 clicks of a mouse. For that one request alone, that electronic communication probably saved my company about $10-$15.

My granddaughters have never been without a computer. They have not had to rely on a public library to do a research paper and they have never had to fret about missed phone calls from friends. I don’t want to give away my age but a microwave oven was new technology when I was in my early teens.

In the future, all of our kids’ text books will be accessed through tablet devices. They will not need text book covers, a backpack, pens, pencils or erasers. Losing a text book is devastating but can you imagine how catastrophic it will be for this same teen to lose a tablet computer? That tablet device contains her text books, her homework; it contains her class notes, prior school papers, book reports, flash cards, pictures, email, her Facebook page, and her favorite games. It contains her addresses, phone numbers, doodles, diary and her calendar. Whoever found her iPad, Droid Tablet, Playbook or Nook just found her entire life. Scary thought, huh?

It is our future. People insist on finding the most convenient way possible to live their busy lives. They want an easy way to conduct transactions – whether its communication, paying a bill, accessing account information, making travel arrangements, looking up vacation spots, or shopping. It’s all there….under a keyboard, on top of a mouse, or sliding around a touchpad.

Dawson Power makes doing business with us easy and convenient. Customer-read meters are a thing of the past for most customers. Today our meters send your reading in automatically. You can receive your bill through email. With two clicks and a log-in you can pay it online. If you want to know what we’re up to on a daily basis….ask to be our friend on Facebook!

The Anatomy Of A Distribution System

This is great information for everyone. American Electric Power explains the pieces of a distribution system in language we all understand.



Special thanks to American Electric Power (http://www.aep.com).  

You can reach Dawson Public Power District at (308) 324-2386, http://www.dawsonpower.com; or on Facebook, keyword search dawsonpower

The Future of Power Costs in Nebraska

Looking at the kilowatt hour rate by state shows that Nebraska ranks 10th lowest in the nation. The Energy Information Administration (the source most used for comparing rates in all energy sectors) cites Nebraska’s average rate is 7.21¢ per kilowatt hour. Lowest on the scale is Wyoming which charges an average of 6.08¢ per kilowatt hour. As a nation, the average kilowatt hour cost is 9.82¢. Conversely, the state with the highest cost of electricity is Hawaii which charges an average of 21.21¢ per kilowatt hour.

Like Nebraska, Wyoming’s chief source of power is obtained through coal plants. Actually, 45% of our nation derives its electricity from coal; 23% is from natural gas; 20% from nuclear; 7% from hydro plants, 4% from renewables and 1% all other.

The EPA is expected to enact several key regulations in the coming decade that will have an impact on the U.S. power sector, particularly the fleet of coal-fired power plants. Because the rules have not yet been finalized, their impacts cannot be fully analyzed. Rest assured, any ruling by EPA will impact electric rates negatively because the EPA is focusing on our nation’s largest source of power…coal.

At a recent meeting hosted by Nebraska Public Power District, the general expectation is that NPPD will raise the wholesale cost of power by 6.5% for 2012. NPPD explains (click link) why the rate increase is necessary. In addition to other factors, they are citing a 75% increase in fuel costs as being the primary driver behind the increase.

About 60% of Dawson PPDs operating costs are wholesale power purchases. That means Dawson Power customers may see a 4% (estimate) increase in their rates simply based on NPPDs increase. We are also affected by rising fuel costs so there may be an adjustment to our projection as we do a cost of service study later this year.