by Steve Haner
Ignore what they say. Watch what they do. The Virginia General Assembly could cut the bills of Dominion Energy customers a bit, but instead will give the company another ten years to take your money and spend it on someone else (after skimming off its healthy profit).
A ten-year program using money from all ratepayers (business customers included) to bury the tap lines of a few of the utility’s (residential only) customers is about to get another ten years to run, through 2038. This happens with an intentionally opaque enactment clause at the end of companion bills House Bill 1393 and Senate Bill 253.
The most recent phase of the “strategic undergrounding program” (SUP), phase eight, cost $318 million and worked out to just under $800,000 for every mile of buried lines and just under $11,000 for each customer served. “Served” includes both the home that got the new lines and any homes down the line which benefit if that one connection fails less often.
Without question the 155,000 houses upgraded or downstream from upgrades have shown a dramatic reduction in outages since. But a cost versus benefit analysis on whether this is a good use of more than $3.4 billion for the other 2.6 million customers is lacking, and the State Corporation Commission staff highlights that void in its comments on the pending phase nine proposal.
Ten more years of this will easily cost ratepayers another $3 billion plus. It is reasonable to assume the utility in the first phases of projects targeted 4,000 miles of homes with the worst reliability records. The lowest hanging fruit is done.
