Author: Steve Haner
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What Does Dominion Lose When Customers Leave?
When you use a competitive service provider (CSP) instead of the monopoly electricity company, what does the monopoly provider stop collecting? Just what part of the electric bill are big customers such as Costco and Kroger and Walmart seeking to avoid by leaving Dominion Energy Virginia? The answer is most of it, everything covered under…
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Medicare for All? Medicare for Us Is Different
Blame this one on four wasted evenings watching the Democratic presidential debates. As Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and the rest were describing their promise of “Medicare for All,” my wife and I were deep in the process of learning about and registering for “Medicare for Us,” which kicked in this month. The big…
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Dominion Protecting Renewable Energy Buyers?!
Dominion Energy Virginia is simply trying to protect the unsuspecting public from environmental fraudsters, you understand. Companies like Costco Wholesale and The Kroger Company lack the energy expertise to decide for themselves if a competitive service provider really is providing 100 percent renewable energy. They are being denied that service by Dominion for their own…
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Bacon Bits: The Rules, California is Crazy, Rider E
This is the simple stuff, people. Delegate Nick Freitas doesn’t seem to be the only person in the Republican camp complaining that the rules are a problem, at least when enforced. A conservative activist group that went after state Senator Emmett Hanger in the June primary is now screaming “bloody murder” because Hanger filed a…
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Saving the Planet Sometime Soon After Never
What feeds persistent skepticism about those highly touted energy efficiency programs that we utility ratepayers get billed for? The actual reports on their costs and outcomes do not help. Case in point: A quarterly report from Dominion Energy Virginia about its on-going efforts to reduce energy usage for low income or elderly residential customers. The…
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A Ray of Hope Ends a Troubled Week
Just when hope has largely departed, a ray of sunshine. Senator Chap Petersen of the 34th District in Fairfax showed up in my inbox with a nice message on why he was pleased to attend this week’s festivities in Jamestown. Why did he feel the need to explain, I wondered? I didn’t have to wonder…
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Court Backs Little Debbie In Tax Dispute
Don’t underestimate Little Debbie – the spunky tyke took on the Augusta County tax collectors and won. But the county still has her money. The Virginia Supreme Court has sided with manufacturer McKee Foods Corporation, which makes the Little Debbie snack products, in a dispute over the tax assessment on its 828,000-square-foot factory in Augusta…
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No Appeal Filed on RGGI Regulation, Now In Force
Virginia’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is now fully authorized under a new state regulation, and the deadline to appeal that regulation has now passed with no appeal filed. The text of the regulation is here. Language inserted by General Assembly Republicans into the current state budget merely puts RGGI membership and…
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$7 More on Dominion Bills for Transmission
Electricity bills for Dominion Energy Virginia customers jump again in September – almost $7 monthly for a residential customer using 1000 kilowatt hours – as it begins to collect on $845 million in transmission system investments over the past year. A similar level of investment is planned for next year. The rate hike will appear…
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New Industrial Rate Still Challenged By Microsoft
A hearing on Dominion Energy Virginia’s proposal for a new market-based electricity rate for its largest customers opened Thursday with the announcement it had settled its differences with the State Corporation Commission staff and that part of the dispute was over. (The case file is here.) As the SCC staff lined up with the utility,…
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New Front In Dominion’s War Against Competition
Dominion Energy Virginia has opened a new and aggressive front in its economic war against companies seeking to offer Virginians retail choice for electricity service, directly attacking two firms promising 100 percent renewable energy to lure away environmentally minded customers. In separate filings on July 15, the utility charged that both Direct Energy Services LLC…
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Koch Blames Boards, Presidents for Tuition Hikes
Former Old Dominion University president and current emeritus professor of economics James V. Koch is willing to shoulder his share of the blame. “I was president for fifteen years, so I sang some of the same songs that presidents and administrators sing these days.” Those would be the siren songs sung when seeking major and…
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Health Insurance Check-Up; Migration to Medicaid
The number of Virginians buying health insurance as individuals is shrinking and may shrink more, with two trends getting most of the credit: Expansion of Medicaid eligibility and a change in the law that allowed those in business as sole proprietors to buy policies in the small group marketplace. Individual coverage peaked at 418,000 Virginians…
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Sense and Nonsense on Climate Armageddon
A good sense discussion on the Most Important Threat to Human History was provided July 14 in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in a guest column from a retired University of Richmond biology professor. Few discussions of the climate change controversy have come closer to my personal views, but Dean Decker has that doctorate from North Carolina…
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Virginia Unemployment Fund Gains In Good Times
Laissez les bon temps roulez. Virginia’s strong employment climate is adding a financial spare tire to Virginia’s unemployment trust fund, now above 83 percent solvency by one actuarial measure and exceeding a federal recommended minimum balance on another measure. The annual unemployment fund status update for a legislative oversight commission Wednesday lasted about 30 minutes,…