20051207Comment.pdf

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Jean Jewell
/111 A,l/fo
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Sent:
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Ed Howell
Monday, December 05 20056:17 PM
Jean Jewell; Ed Howell; Gene Fadness; Tonya Clark
Comment acknowledgement
WWW Form Submission:
Monday, December 05, 2005
6:16:36 PM
Case: PAC-E-05-
Name: Gerald Fleischman
Street Address: 11535 W. Hazeldale Ct.
City: Boise
State: 10
ZIP: 83713
Home Telephone: [phone]E-Mail: gfleisch98 60hotmail. com
Company: Idaho Power ~anymailing list yes no: i
Comment description: is very interesting in this day of expectations of increasing
demand for electric power and knowing that two of the resources that can supply this
power, coal and natural gas, expecially natural gas, are going to climb in price, that
PacifiCorp is offering to sell power to Nu-West for 3.8 cents/kWh on the high end. This is
an extremely low price, especially compared to irrigation , residential and small
commercial. While it is true that this electricity costs less to deliver because it
probably has a single point, is that worth 3 cents/kWh/
I think having a utility offer this kind of rate to large industrial customers such as
this gives utilities no room whatsoever to oppose PURPA power on a cost basis. It is very
unlikely that PacifiCorp would make more money selling this power to Nu-West than to other
rate payers. I know everyone has complained about the rates paid by irrigation pumpers. I
think you will find that this rate offered to Nu-Cor is far less than what Bell Rapids was
paying when it used power costs as a reason to abandon farming.
Perhaps if Nu-West cannot compete using rates that are justifiable on a cost basis, that
is residential and small commercial rate minus the cost savings to a large customer, that
perhaps this form of phosphate mining cannot be justified.
We need incentives for companies to improve energy use and develop new technologies to
increase electric energy productivity. Keeping rates artificially low - meaning lower than
the cost savings vs other customer class rates would justifiy - is not a good signal to
the phosphate industry. We already made this mistake with the aluminum industry. It relied
on low cost power and died when there was a crunch on electricity supplies. It did not
innovate around this potential disadvantage.
It would be very reasonable for the price of electricity to Nu-West to be the cost to
other customer classes minus the cost savings associated with single point large-scaledeli very. Make that the price and see what happens.
Transaction 10: 1251816.
Referred by: http: / /www.puc. state. id. us/ scripts/polyform. dll/ ipuc
User Address: 164.165.96.
User Hostname: 164.165.96.