Florida PUC shoots down FPL rate case...

[NHSparky]

...and FPL responds by suspending $10 BILLION in capital investment.

http://image.fplemail.com/lib/fef91270736c06/m/1/NR+RateCase+011310.pdf

Read and discuss.

My take: In a way, I can understand the need to recover stranded costs which are unique to utilities where rates are dictated by the government, in this case, the state of Florida.  However, FPL has been increasingly involved in "green" projects and the perception is that unless someone else (i.e., government and the ratepayers) foot the bill, those alternative energy projects go away.

[DumbAss Tanker]

However, FPL has been increasingly involved in "green" projects and the perception is that unless someone else (i.e., government and the ratepayers) foot the bill, those alternative energy projects go away.

Is that necessarily a bad thing, or just a forced return to rational economic decision-making?

[Eupher]

Looks to me like FPL is doing some major-league whining because their rate increase was nuked. So they're gonna take their ball and go home.

Floridians will see the results of that decision. Or not.

OTOH, this is a pretty good indicator of the decisions that a corporation will make to protect itself from the gummint. That enforces the point that ALL organizations exist to protect and justify themselves above all else.

Congress works like that too.

[NHSparky]

Is that necessarily a bad thing, or just a forced return to rational economic decision-making?

I think it's beyond what most people want to invest, and both the PUC and FPL aren't being up front with their ratepayers as to how counterproductive those "green" jobs and power really are.

But what upsets me most about FPL is that they're refusing to build the two new nukes down at Turkey Point.  While the total cost of that project may well be beyond $10B, those plants would more than return that money to FPL and the stockholders over the lifetimes of those plants.

[Randy]

FP&L Sucks. This is SOP for them. They have a monopoly in their service areas and run roughshod over their customers. They believe they can do whatever they want whenever they want and how dare the PUC say anything about it. The commissioners were so far into FP&L's pockets that they had to restructure and get some new blood on the board. This decision was delayed so they could seat 2 new ones to get an honest one for a change.

I despise Florida Plunder & Loot. If they were given competition then they would stop this stupid shit they play out every year. After the '04 hurricanes they wanted us to buy them a complete new infrastructure because they'd let the old stuff fall so far into disrepair. The lies they spewed out were so transparent they got slapped down.

They managed to pull off a sweet little scam though. Since there was so much damage they couldn't send out the meter readers so they "estimated" everyones bill. Well no one was surprised when our bills were "estimated" to higher levels than they'd ever been before. My bill was normally 140-150 a month during aug/sept. The "estimate" was over 300 per month and that was with power being out a total of 5 of 8 weeks. We were credited once they could read the meters again but they still managed to steal usage of several billion dollars interest free for 3 months.