re: Entergy Louisiana customers could see a 15-year, $5 a month Screw Job

[quote]With the money they make every month from every customer

You do realizes a lot of utility companies in the country are nonprofit right?

3M a Mile? To a person that works in another industry that seems astronomically high in and of it self. What is driving that cost? Material vs labor?
But more importantly for the comparison, what is the cost per mile to do it the traditional way, with poles and such. Thanks

quote:

---

You do realizes a lot of utility companies in the country are nonprofit right?

---

Entergy is not.

Maybe we should try a non-profit entity.

quote:

---

I also want to add that the low energy costs also attract all of the large industrial customers from all over the world to build here and create jobs for a large portion of the state.

---

It may help, but its a drop in the bucket behind crooked politicians always looking to pad a pocket, and that huge body of water that not only originates in Louisiana and splits the nation in half, but connects to an even bigger body of water that connects to the world.

quote:

---

Now Entergy’s new high voltage line to Port Fourchon fared well from what I hear. That was constructed just a few years ago for 130 MPH winds.

---

Entergy designs new stuff to withstand either 150 mph wind or 140 mph in Hurricane Prone areas. Problem is their is lots of old stuff still out there and the only stance you can really take is if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. There’s not a transmission system in the world that won’t experience an outage after a strong hurricane passes through. You can’t design for tornadoes, debris on the line, broken insulators, and damaged conductors. What you do have is a system with redundancy that allows for quick fixes and power to be restored in a timely manner. And in the meantime you spend billions a year building new lines, upgrading critical lines and bringing on additional transmission customers .

They’ll get it. It’s insane to me that our legislators / nominated commissioners eat this shite up every time. I assume Entergy is making money on what they’re charging all of us every month. Shouldn’t they, y’know, be creating a reserve with those profits for when these storms hit rather than lining their investor pockets? Crazy thought, I know, but that the cost of doing business as an energy company in Louisiana. It’s bullshite they run to the government every time they have to do their job because they don’t plan adequately.

I once took this class on an obscure topic called economics. There was this principle that competition created better quality goods and services and also kept prices down. Maybe there was some merit to it.

quote:

---

I once took this class on an obscure topic called economics. There was this principle that competition created better quality goods and services and also kept prices down. Maybe there was some merit to it.

---

There was a reason Friedman hated any form of licensure requirement. Particularly one regulated by the government.

Clearly Entergy's fault that the power went out after one of the most catastrophic hurricanes to ever hit louisiana

Begging for grid infrastructure upgrades is only going to make your electric bill higher

quote:

---

So even if the materials were $100/ foot ( which seems like a huge premium but I guess when you are the only gave in town you can charge what you want for 12 inches of material that may costs less than a dollar, especially for polymer), some costs is severely overpriced. I get that 2 junctions per Mile are going into that, but if you are paying more and more for these big machines, then your efficiency should be improved so costs in other areas should come down.
And 70 days per junction. That’s 42 feet/day. 14 yards.
I am struggling with reconciling how John Q Public isn’t being severely, severely fleeced by some entities in this process and/or if the PSC isn’t able to understand the price gouging or doesn’t want to. Thanks in advance for your thoughts

---

Materials are a lot, big cable is really expensive. But its the labor that really cranks up the bill. Also, remember Entergy isn't building these. They bid it out and a bunch of companies put in bid and one gets selected. Typical construction type stuff.

I can't get into specifics because the projects I work on all make me sign NDAs.

But when you're thinking about this a couple things to ask yourself. How much does 5" cable cost? If you want to reduce EMF and buffer zones, you go DC and what's the conversion equipment cost and now you have double the cable. How much does 6"ID HDPE cost? How much flowable and non flowable fill will you need? What are you going to have to do to keep the tree huggers off your arse? Here's the killer. Labor. As you pointed out, that seems like a snail's pace. But only a few days of that is actually boring or trenching. There's a ton of site prep, testing, splicing, etc. Want to do 100 miles? How many crews do you need working to do that in a year?

Once you take in all those factors, it's just hugely expensive.