quote:
While yall bitch about North and South LA I'm sitting here wondering why any customer has to pay a surcharge for a company to repair it services. It's bull shite.

Read the thread. It's been explained.

ETA: I'm gonna take a shot at this.

You own a half trillion dollar company on the West Coast. Right on the San Andreas fault. You have to be there because that's where your customers are. The California government only allows you to charge customers enough to cover your business expenses plus 10%. You have a half trillion invested in your factory, but since it's on the San Andreas fault, no insurer will touch you, even though earthquakes are rare. You could tear down your factories and rebuild to earthquake-proof buildings, but that has to come out of the 10% profit you're allowed to make, because the government won't let you raise your prices.

An earthquake hits. Your company has $4 billion in damages, but you only have $250 million on hand. The government forces you to rebuild, because you cannot go out of business: the public depends on your company to supply your product. If you don't rebuild, no other businesses can operate. You are forced to spend $4 billion to recover, and the government doesn't give you a penny, so you have to borrow it, and it's paid back out of your 10% profit UNLESS you get a small surcharge on every invoice until it's recovered.

Nobody in his right mind would go into this business by choice, because there's no money in it, but SOMEBODY has to do it because EVERYBODY needs it.

The surcharge keeps the business running and the lights on. The money is already been spent, and if it was rolled into the rate, your bill would triple. That's why the PSC allows Entergy to recover it over an extended period.

Keep in mind that Louisiana as a whole (including other power utilities) has the LOWEST power bills in the country.

This post was edited on 2/23/22 at 3:17 pm