NY Unplugged

I don't agree with many of the conclusions of this report, but there is some good data (all obtained by government sources). http://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/sr_06-08.pdf

There is a list of average electricity retail rates for every state (Table 1; page 2; year of data missing?). NY is ranked 3rd; I would say it's tied w/ Connecticut, which is ranked 2nd. Hawaii gets the honor of being #1.

On Table 2, page 3 there is a breakdown of retail prices for residential, commercial, and industrial sectors by service Region. I personally don't think that residential rates should be higher than commercial/industrial rates. Must the average person always subsidize the business sector? (as I write, the Federal Govt is having to step in to bail out Bear Stearns).

Figure 3 shows sources of electricity generation. It implies that all the generation comes from New York State, but some of the coal generation probably comes from PJM imports, and some of the hydro is probably from Canada.

And in the footnotes (#31), some cost data per kw-hr by source:
Nuclear (2-6 cents)
Wind (6-7 cents)
Solar (9-37 cents)

The NYRI transmission project is mentioned, implying that it' s needed but "NIMBYism" and "parochial objections" are causing problems. This author obviously has not done his homework on the NYRI project, since every kw-hr that flows through the NYRI line would cost 9 cents, which is almost equal to the average retail rate for the United States (9.44 cents--See Table 1).

I e-mailed the author, and asked him to do some more research about the NYRI project. I've done this a couple of times when I see such one-sided reporting, and invited the authors/reporters to come actually visit our area. So far, none have taken me up on the offer.