LET IT FLOW

LET IT FLOW: The palpable disappointment of many in the wake of the defeat of Pat Gegen and Ken Stokes in the recent Kaua`i Island Utilities Coop (KIUC) Board of Directors' election serves for some as another example of voter apathy and the elections-as-popularity-contest syndrome.

But what can we expect when those who walk the walk like Gegen and Stokes have to compete with those who simply talk the talk like the three reelected incumbents who have led us nowhere when it comes to the twin goals of switching to non-carbon renewable energy and lowering electric bills?

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (what's a record grandpa?) the real issue has never really been discussed by candidates, including incumbents supported by the progressive community like Ben Sullivan, Carol Bain and Jan TenBruggencate.

It's really the core of KIUC's governance that's at issue- their very business plan... one based on the concept of "we sell you electricity."

That remnant of the for profit Citizen’s Electric enterprise model persists today even though the "shareholders" have disappeared to be replaced by members.

That means that the infamous "fiduciary responsibility" that board members are constantly reminded of, is to the members and their best interest, not the growth of the "company" in order to accommodate a self-perpetuating vision of a "selling electricity" future.

Even in terms of non-carbon renewables the talk is of borrowing money from the federal government to use for something called "PACE" bonds which will enable the construction of large scale solar farms and the selling of "shares" when what the coop should be doing is facilitating ways to accommodate self-generation in people's homes through solar, wind and other emerging self-contained technologies.

Instead the coop has taken a stance supporting caps on direct "net metering" where excess power is fed into the grid and, upon demand, back to the user at the same rate both ways in favor of exorbitant "feed in tariffs" that make the buy back of the power created by home generators far more costly than it need be.

The bugaboo of "intermittency"- as in what do you do when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn’t blow"- is simply a red herring with other emerging technologies in storage and distribution- technologies to which KIUC seems so risk-averse that it will never happen until the rest of the world is way ahead of us... as they already are in places in Northern Europe like Germany and Sweden.

Instead of being THE leaders in a state that touts itself as a leader in solar and wind, the most potentially progressive of utility governance structures- our coop- is in fact bringing up the rear and foot dragging on the dual goals stated above.

Instead of discouraging home generation and forcing those who want to "invest" in solar or wind join large scale ventures, our coop should be offering zero percent loans to construct windmills and solar installations in people's yards and on their homes and allow members to pay them off monthly with a charge on their bills equitable to what they pay now.

The fact is that instead of encouraging self-sufficiency the board enters into power purchase agreements at prices tagged to inflated fossil fuel costs rather than the actual cost of the alternative generation itself.

Next election, ask your candidate how they view the business model and how they would serve the goals of lowering the amount we pay while encouraging carbon-free energy. And if their answers are more of the same, remember- that that's exactly what we'll get.

HUSH MY DARLIN’, DON’T FEAR MY DARLIN’, THE NAGO SLEEPS TONITE

HUSH MY DARLIN’, DON’T FEAR MY DARLIN’, THE NAGO SLEEPS TONITE: Deep in the bowels of the labyrinth, the minotaur sleeps fitfully, his horns impeding what should be a placid slumber with his minions at the gates assuring that nothing is revealed.

But Kaua`i isn’t the only place the most basic and important information and documents are missing from on-line perusal due to the use the same unfathomable excuse for their absence.

A few weeks back we were working on evaluating the plethora of candidates for office on Kaua`i so for a full list we went to check the same handy-dandy pdf that we’d used up until the July filing deadline to track who was running.

But while the names and addresses of most races were there, those elections to fill the offices of those who resigned to run for another office- as in the case of Kaua`i the State Senate 16th district which Gary Hooser had vacated to run for lieutenant governor- were missing.

So surely the State Office of Elections main page must have the list. Surely you jest- and it’s Scott Nago who’s in charge, not Shirley.

Let’s see Home? no we’re there. Administrative Rules? Phew, there was enough pilikila over them last elections. Factsheets? nope nothing there. Calendar? Information? Contact Us? Nope, uh-uh, nothing.

Well let’s move down. Voter Information? No- that would be too obvious. Voting in Hawaii Factsheet? 2010 Polling Places Factsheet? A Guide to Voting in Hawai (sic)? Nada, zippo, bupkis.

Ah 2010 Election Contest and Incumbents Factsheet That’s gotta be it.

But noooooo. Although they seemingly had the time and personnel to assure that they listed all races up for grabs along with the names of the appropirate incumbents (or lack threreof)- the ones who apropriated (or actually didn’t appropriate enough of) the money for running the office- it was apparently too much work to list their opponents.

Well we headscratchingly went off, google in hand, in search of the candidates from other sources.

We continued to act like we had ukus until we read this little item in a letter to the editor of the local newspaper:

Support League of Women Voters

It is good to see The Garden Island promoting voter education (Sept. 5, A1 and A6).

In addition to reading your local newspaper, candidate information for the Sept. 18 primary election can be found at http://www.lwv-hawaii.com/candidates.htm

When the State Office of Elections which formerly posted this information on its website but discontinued the service citing budgetary constraints, the League of Women Voters in Hawai`i volunteered their website and time.

To continue receiving voter information, please support the LWV in Hawai`i as well as your local news.

Carol Bain, 2007 LWV Kaua`i County president, Puhi

Budgetary constraints? How much does it cost to plop the list- the one from which they prepared the ballots- onto a web page... especially considering they went to the trouble to list the races and incumbents.

Yes, the governor and the legislature cut the OOE’s budget to the bone causing them to close and consolidate dozens of polling places. But you’d think the list of who is running wouldn’t be left to LWV to post on-line

Once again the state is taking it’s cue from Kaua`i where the council has claimed it’s way too much work to simply plop public documents onto the county web site as they are made public- especially since they have this expensive, super-duper “copy machine” that has all the bells and whistles including a button that will place public documents on line.

We had plenty to say about the last Elections Chief Kevin “King” Cronin, the Wisconsin attorney who seemingly botched every decision he made with his “rules?- we don’t need no stinkin’ rules” attitude until he suddenly moved on leaving Nago, the new elections chief, with a huge mess on his seemingly incapable hands.

But the job is apparently too much for Nago too if this is the type of excuse for not doing the very basics of the job properly is going to be the norm for the rest of the election season.

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Correction: We goofed when we said that, unless there is a tie, the mayoral election will be over Saturday. We forgot about the charter amendment that changed out preliminary nonpartisan elections from a “50% plus one” to a “top two system”. Thanks to Horace Stoessel for the reminder. What that means in English is that the race for Mayor WILL go on to November. We regret the error.

Also in our news article on alleged Westside serial killer Wally Wilson, based on early information obtained at deadline we said that Nola Rebecca “Becky” Thompson was murdered. Thus far, according to county authorities, the cause of death has not been determined We regret any error.

ELECTRIFIED FENCE

ELECTRIFIED FENCE: This year’s Kaua`i Island Utilities Co-op (KIUC) election is over and for the second time in a row a non corporate “people’s” candidate was elected- last year good governance advocate Carol Bain and this year renewable energy maven Ben Sullivan.

But the problems cited during KIUC’s purchase phase by the “nitpickers”- in fact the problems they found that gave them their name before they successfully challenged the original inflated purchase price, saving members almost $100 million- are apparently coming home to roost and it’s anyone’s guess whether these two new board members will try to tackle the core disconnect within “our co-op”.

One glaring bit of nonsensical jibber-jabber was highlighted in a recent article in the local paper if the report by reporter Michael Levine is accurate.

He wrote:

Just hours after the swearing-in ceremony and officer appointments, the board returned for its first regular monthly meeting under its new leadership and immediately received some gloomy forecasts.

Chief Financial Officer David Bissell said abnormally cold winter weather — February’s average temperature was a chill-inducing 70 degrees and the month’s 139 fueling degree days marked the lowest in more than a decade — allowed hotels to turn off their air conditioners, driving megawatt-hour sales even lower than was expected under the poor economic climate.

February sales were down some 12 percent from the budgeted total of 37,200 megawatt-hours, and down some 20 percent from the projected $10.9 million. KIUC has pulled in just $18 million through the first two months of 2009, compared to $29 million over the same stretch in 2008.
Now wait a gol-darn minute. While the challenge of integrating non-fissile fuel energy into the co-op’s energy portfolio is a hotly debated topic (although it really shouldn’t be- we’ll get to that in as moment) everyone agrees that cutting energy usage is the one thing everyone agrees will help insure a stable energy future.

So why is this a “gloomy forecast”? It should be time for celebration- we’re using less electricity.

It’s because in reality the co-op is, from top to bottom, when all is said and done, is still operated in the same manner as any for-profit electrical utility.

The business model of “we produce electricity and sell it to you” is a ubiquitous one in the “industry”. But the dangers of adhering to many of the particulars in that model was the chief apprehensions cited by the nitpickers who saw the future of diminished demand and knew that the purchase price was way overvalued- even at the lowered price and especially if large users decide to generate their own electricity as is already happening in some hotels and at the navy base.

It could and should be different when the customers own their electric company but a required indoctrination of board members and draconian rules- made up by the board and not approved by the members- to re-enforce the “training” make any difference between a for profit utility and a co-op strictly cosmetic.

Spending on advertising and other frivolous activities including these supposedly “educational” junkets- which are really just brainwashing sessions to insure that the board members operate the company like a for profit- are bad enough.

But nowhere is the “selling electricity” model more apparent than in the recent announcement that the “net metering” program has reached it’s limit and from now on there will be no more households enrolled in the program.

That essentially means that the price for new home generators to buy back the electricity they produce at home via solar or wind power is exorbitant compared to what they sell their excess back to the company for, whereas those who got in on the bottom floor sell and buy back their excess electricity at the same price.

A recent debate in the local paper was punctuated by a bit of distraction and selective fact-citations by one Walt Barnes, one of the chief prevaricators during the purchase phase who, as PR chair, constantly and verifiably lied over and over about the particulars of the purchase, citing “confidential” information of the sellers and making up “facts” our of whole cloth for as long as he could... sometimes even after he was “caught” by the nitpickers.

Barnes’ theory essentially says the co-op cannot afford to buy back the electricity at the same rate as it was put in saying the company has to pay for all the thing associated with producing and distributing a certain amount of electricity to the island because there are times when there is no sun and/or wind.

But that’s a bolus of bullcrap. There are no “extra” expenses for the grid when it’s used to serve those who install their own energy production. It’s there already. And a base fee for hooking up is already charged to all customers even if they don’t use a watt.

Plus, the saving in not having to produce more electricity should surely even save the company money if the model isn’t one of creating and selling electricity.

The reality that Barnes leaves out is that in modern grids and generation facilities the energy production needed is instantaneously “sensed” by the system and generation is controlled by demand at any point in time.

Even if our grid is not fully up to snuff the investment in this technology would surely pay for itself in the long run through generating less and not having to build any more generation facilities.

The proof of this is that the company generates electricity based on demand today. It peaks at certain time- late afternoon and evening- and drops dramatically at night. And current generation is synched to this cycle.

Technology for these “ smart grids” is not just “being developed” but is already actualized in many places across the country. But even current systems should to be able to accommodate another variable in usage- alternative home generate electricity.

But does our co-op seek to accommodate this? Certainly not.

Instead of working on ways to increase net metering and support home generation- with, say a program like the one for solar hot water where low or even zero percent loans are made from a revolving fund to allow people to purchase systems that will pay for themselves over time- they are planning "fields” of windmills and solar panels and other non-fossil sources so they can continue to sell electricity to you.

Because it’s not in their interest to allow people to generate their own juice under the model they are perpetuation. That would cause the gloomy future... and part of the reason why some nitpickers advocated buying only the grid and allowing the generation facilities- especially the old outdated “dirtiest in the state” one that that sits on the toxic waste dump in `Ele`ele.

As long as we- and those we elect to the board- buy into this “can’t do” attitude KIUC will remain a bum deal for everyone involved.