“Our goals are, Number one: Reliability. What we’ve experienced in the last two weeks we don’t want to go through again, and that’s outages,” says Craig Greene, Chairman of the Louisiana Public Service Commission. “Number two is affordability. How can we have maximum affordability with minimum cost as a society?”
Speaking today with WWL’s Tommy Tucker, The Chairman of the Louisiana Public Service Commission, Craig Greene, spoke bluntly about power utility Entergy.
Greene told Tucker the Commission has joined with the City of New Orleans in a lawsuit against Entergy to be heard by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The suit stems from Entergy’s efforts to raise nearly a billion dollar for repairs, renovations and upgrades to the troubled Grand Gulf Nuclear Station in Port Gibson, Mississippi—the plant where most of New Orleans gets its electricity.
“The lawsuit will go before FERC, basically a prudence review. Was that $800,000,000 necessary and was it used appropriately in the ratepayer’s best interest,” Greene says.
Despite raising $800,000,000 from ratepayers, Greene says the company spent far less than it raised on the plant.
Grand Gulf continues to have operational problems.
The suit is get that money back for customers.
“If the FERC decides it was not used appropriately, or just a portion of a large portion should be refunded to the ratepayers,” Greene says. “And ratepayers will see a large reduction [in their power bills] from getting that money they’ve already paid, they’ll get that back.”
Greene says the general public doesn’t really understand how a company like Entergy works.
“The way they make money is off of them building new things,” Greene begins. “So when they spend money the get a 9-point-8 return on the money they spend. They don’t actually make money on giving us electricity every month.”
Greene says the Entergy’s profits are driven by replacing power plants with new ones.
“They make money by determining they have these couple generation plants that are 40-50-years-old, those need to be decommissioned and we need to build a new one. Well a new one is billion dollars. And they’ll get 9.8% on that.”
Greene makes it clear, he’s not out to get Entergy, “They do provide a great service for us, but because they’re monopoly, that’s where the public service commission comes in. We determine how much they get to make. Because it’s not a competitive market where you get to say I choose Exxon over Texaco. So we give them the opportunity to earn a fair return.”