These past two weeks have been a perfect storm of information pertaining to NYPA and the relicensing of the Niagara Power Project.
To sum it up: We got screwed.
Rob Daly, spokesman for NYPA was on Tom Christy’s show a couple weeks ago and on mine last week. He held as many answers as a shallow pool full of NOTHING. The one thing I learned from him is that it costs about a penny per kwh to produce electricty … which I later learned from the Buffalo News was wrong.
The Buffalo News is in the middle of a great expose on NYPA and specifically the Niagara Power Project. They told us that it’s about a half cent per kwh to produce electricity.
Can I remind you that we pay about 11 cents per kwh … that’s more than a 2000 percent markup.
Today Andrew Kleit was on Dialog to discuss the issue as well. He offered some interesting insight into it. Basically, he said hydropower is the cheapest their is … so cheap it wasn’t on his chart.
So we create power … cheaper than can be measured … and we pay more than 50 percent higher than the average US electricity consumer. Meanwhile, our cheap power gets “shipped” out of state.
I repeat: We got screwed.
But … it’s not too late. Write to Congress, the state, and anyone else that will listen. Tell them that we want the power HERE. And we want it cheap.