Local Rep. Gerald Hocker (38th District) continued his “Coffee’s On Me” series this week, and turnout was high at the Hocker’s Deli on Feb. 28. “I’m either going to have to get a bigger store, or find somewhere else to do this,” he joked.
While Hocker typically uses the Coffee’s On Me events to gather public comment and answer questions, he does sometimes offer speech of his own, as well. And this time, he did open with discussion about pending electricity rate hikes.
“It looks like my rate increases, as a commercial user, may be higher than the 59 percent they’re talking about (for residential customers),” Hocker pointed out. And he said he was already paying more than $10,000 a year, at each store.
“But how do you take it back?” he asked. “Can you put the genie back in the bottle? I really don’t know how.”
According to Hocker, the worst consequence of deregulation had been then-Delmarva Power & Light’s (DP&L’s) newfound ability to divest itself of the generation side of the electric business. “I don’t think we would have seen DP&L selling Conectiv or NRG, if it hadn’t been for deregulation,” he said.
(To recap, DP&L became Conectiv, then sold the Indian River Power Plant to NRG Energy. Under parent company Pepco Holdings, Conectiv Energy still runs the power plant at Edgemoor, in New Castle County. Delmarva Power is another Pepco Holdings subsidiary, but no longer handles any power generation.)
Hocker admitted he hadn’t been around the General Assembly when the issue of deregulation came up — and at the time hadn’t even thought of running yet, for that matter. But he said he remembered feeling skeptical about the move, even then — “I said, ‘It didn’t work for phones, and electricity’s even more of a monopoly,’” he recalled.
Someone asked what chances the local had, as far as getting any alternate suppliers. “Slim to none,” Hocker answered. “From what I’ve been told, proposed rates (from other suppliers) were even higher than Delmarva Power’s.”
Delmarva Power, in the transmission and delivery business, is still regulated. The company requests bids from interested wholesale power suppliers, and passes those costs along. Delmarva Power is working to install additional north-south transmission lines.
This could help stabilize costs, according to a report posted on Delaware’s Public Service Commission Web site (www.state.de.us/delpsc).
Meanwhile, Hocker said he had mixed feelings on proposals floating around the General Assembly, regarding redistribution of tax revenues, to assist less well-to-do residents with their soon-to-be-higher electric bills.
“Are we just creating a bigger problem?” he asked. “Once you start doing that, the problem is that you start looking for other sources of income.”
Hocker gave the state’s spending habits a resounding vote of no confidence. “The state of Delaware is the largest employer in the state, now,” he said. “We need to change things, fast, or we’re going to have a terrible revenue problem.”
But on the plus side, he said he and local Sen. George Howard Bunting (20th District) had good news from NRG, in the form of cleaner coal — and maybe, cleaner coal gas.
NRG has floated the proposition that they might invest as much as $1 billion at the Indian River Power Plant, in a capital project to bring cleaner “coal gasification” to local power generation.
“They want to do that, but they want a commitment from the state,” Hocker said. “I think we should be helping in any way that we can, to get that done.”
NRG officials have suggested that the company’s financiers would need the guarantees of long-term contracting to make such a major capital project a reality.
Someone asked about windmills, and Hocker noted once company’s brief appearance on the scene a couple years ago, talking about installing windmills three miles off the coast.
There’d been a public outcry, he recalled, but he said he wasn’t sure why. “I know some people are concerned about birds, but we’re losing birds with the power sources we have now, too,” Hocker said.
One way or another — whether through increased use of green energy, or a new, more efficient (and much cleaner) coal gasification plant — he emphasized America’s need to reduce dependence on foreign oil.