LIPA raises electric rates for 2nd time in 2 months

[hrmjustin]

Eyewitness News

LONG ISLAND (WABC) -- It's proving to be an expensive summer for Long Island Power Authority customers.

LIPA has raised its rates for the second time in just two months, this time by just over 4 percent.

Add that to a hike in August, and bills have risen by more than 8 percent.

The average customer will pay $6.21 more in September, on top of the $5.71 hike in August.

Read more at http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/long_island&id=9235620

[Hestia]

1. Do y'all not have a Public Service Commission who does or does not allow rate changes?

Looks like it's time or LI to follow Boulder and get local control of the energy producer and go green.

[hrmjustin]

2. LIPA is run by criminals

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Not really. Going back over the years, the Long Island Lighting Co...

was one of the worst utilities in the country. Probably the worst. The Shoreham nuclear plant debacle was pretty much the tipping point, and several hurricanes giving us outages for weeks stirred the rage. One chairman, who was installed to prevent his predecessor being indicted, was vacationing in Greece during one huge storm and announced there was no point in coming back because he couldn't fix the lines anyway.

(I remember a crew from West Virginia brought in to restore power after one storm that was amazed that LILCO was using equipment they considered obsolete 20 years earlier. After their quick fix for the hurricane damage, my daily 10 minute power outages stopped.)

Anyway, the state stepped and, after vast complications I won't bore you with, gave us LIPA-- the Long Island Power Authority. Rates went up because ratepayers, not stockholders or management should pay for prior screwups, and some deal was cut with something called National Grid. And rates went up again. And many of the old managers were still on the payroll. Marginally better than LILCO, but we are not happy.

Now, a deal has finally been struck wiht PSE&G, a New Jersey utility that is actually run pretty well, at least compared with the crooks and incompetents who ran LILC/LIPA. They'll be running the whole show soon, maybe by next year, and we should see some improvement.

Many years ago, Long Island was given the choice of cheap upstate hydro power or private utilities. Three towns chose state power while the rest of the island believed the bullshit that the state couldn't do anything right. Those three towns enjoyed dirt cheap electric rates and no blackouts for many, many years while the rest of us felt like we were living in the third world.