Climate Change: Your Catastrophic Electric Bill Ahead

Massachusetts and Rhode Island have the fourth and fifth highest electric rates in the United States and it's only to get more expensive.

The average homeowner in either state can walk out their front door and see the electric wires and transformers are the same ones placed in the 1940s and 1950s. During the Winter months, thousands of residents lose power for weeks and during the summer power usage is causing ongoing power outages. The electric company is maintaining an aged system.

During the Summer, the additional household load can create a major strain on transmission lines. The local electric company suppliers say their equipment is reliable and resilient but tell that to the residents sitting in the dark with no air conditioning or power in the winter.

Soon we will all be asked to cut back on our electrical usage as we are every Summer. With the heat and humidity on the way, more and more communities have experienced Summer power outages. So how reliable and resilient is the current system?

Massachusetts and Rhode Island have a long twenty-year history of promoting renewable energy. Technologies include megawatt land and ocean-based wind turbines and massive megawatt solar fields The legislatures have passed legislation to force electric companies into business with private renewable energy companies. The only problem has been politicians put the cart before the horse. The electric grid or what is called the infrastructure is old and antiquated leaving customers to pray the wind doesn't go over 50 miles per hour or the temperature doesn't rise above 90 degrees.

Today homeowners are surrounded by loud land based commercial megawatt wind turbines, solar panels and massive battery backup systems and now plans for massive ocean wind turbine farms but the power outages to the residential homes are getting worse as the electric infrastructure ages in the neighborhoods.

Let's look at Falmouth, Massachusetts where residents on Cape Cod pay some of the highest electric rates in the country. The town purchased at a cost of millions two commercial megawatt wind turbines in which the local zoning board and Massachusetts Superior Court determined they are a nuisance and shut them down. Select Board Chairwoman Susan Moran said the legal expenses are $800,000.00 after an eight-year legal battle between the town and residents. The electric grid is still old and the bills are expensive. You wonder how many Falmouth residents remember how long and how many times their power went out last winter?

Next, last week on Block Island, the Town of New Shoreham, Rhode Island had power outages to local residents and businesses. The antiquated electric grid on the Island can't handle the influx of Summer residents. Block Island, Rhode Island has 5 ocean commercial wind turbines equal to 30 megawatts, back up diesel generators and in 2017 took a major step forward as National Grid placed a 20-mile ocean electric cable between the mainland ( Narragansett) and Block Island. How much longer before the residents and businesses on the Island figure out their politicians have put the cart before the horse? The power still goes out! During the ocean wind turbine installations their town diesel generators caught fire.

The Block Island off-shore wind turbines constitute an epi-phenomenon on an already decrepit power grid that has difficulty serving the increased needs of many second home summer residents that swell the island’s population. (You can look into how many that is, but when they suddenly turn on their air conditioning systems, as well as try to use supplied electricity to do all the things that a modern society does, the power will fail.)

Adding wind turbines into the “energy mix” didn’t help prevent the power outages. They guaranteed that they would happen.

Finally, Puerto Rico is a Caribbean island and unincorporated U.S. territory. In 2016 the Island had almost 200 megawatts of wind turbine power and 125 megawatts of Solar power. Hurricane Maria in one storm took out hundreds of millions of dollars of renewable energy.

Prior to Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico's power authority was $9 billion in debt. Puerto Rico prior to the storm in 2016 was suffering power outages at rates four to five times higher than average U.S. customers. The power grid was ignored as millions were spent on renewable energy projects wasted by one storm. A year after the hurricane there are still power outages!

It's time for our politicians to stop spending our tax dollars on renewable energy projects and start upgrading the electric infrastructure to residential homes before we're all siting in the dark.

It's time for the media to stop reporting by omission and report the entire story that includes Jill and Joe electric ratepayers whose electric bills are a second mortgage on our homes.