PUC Chairman on Wind, Smart Meters and the ERCOT Job
When Barry Smitherman got tapped for the Public Utility Commission in 2004, he was surprised to learn that Texas had its own electricity grid.
A Highlands native, Smitherman had spent 16 years in investment banking, specializing in public finance and infrastructure projects. He was sacked in 2002 for helping to write an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle advising Houston that the bonds the city was considering were a bad deal. Soon after, he took a job as a prosecutor in the district attorney's office in Houston — starting at the bottom, as a "baby prosecutor" — and wrote a book titled ...
Comments (1)
JohnJohnson
I'm really disappointed in how you wrote this piece. The one point I agree with is that our gov appoints people to positions where they are not qualified to serve. Everything else is fluff.
Perry was around when the Enron head suggested deregulatiing electricity and the gov has provided everything the Big's have asked for since. All Mr. Smitherman has done since he has been at the PUC is nod his head yes when the gov nods his in that direction.
I have one case in point, and there are many more .... the industry suggested we make a move to smart meters which would save them a bundle by getting rid of meter readers.
The PUC studied what was available. In the interim, ONCOR went ahead and purchased millions of dollars worth of meters. When the PUC issued approval, they recommended a meter other than the one ONCOR prematurely bought. The results? The PUC allowed them, through increased billing, to recover much of the cost of the wrong meters.
Now if I owned a contracting company and knew that the state was going to need a long, long ditch dug, and I went out and bought hundreds of backhoes capable of digging six feet deep, only to find that when the contract was let that the ditch needed to be twelve feet deep, do you think the state would allow me to recover the cost for the backhoes that would not do the job? Fat chance.
I should also point out that the city of Austin, who owns their own electricty generation, is not charging customers for their smart meters. They realize that the real savings will be in more efficent operations and meter reader payroll savings. The PUC is allowing ONCOR to charge us approximately $300 in deregulated areas. They not only reap the savings, they get more money out of our pocket to boot.
This meter issue is just one scenario. Had I had more time and space, I would have moved on to other inequities
Mr. Smitherman has been in charge while we have been raped and pillaged. You gave him a walk in your piece, or you just didn't do your homework. I'm not sure which.