Timeline August 13, 2009
TVA wants answers
August 13, 2009
In an attempt to point that wicked finger away from itself, the TVA will be coming up with all kinds of peripheral issues. After all, they just hired and expert PR person as a new vice president of “communications”. First of all, why would that even be necessary if TVA was doing its job right and especially with an overabundance of public relations staff?
Instead of immediately studying what it can and should do to cut costs, TVA is asking fuzzy questions such as, “What are alternatives for meeting electrical needs over the next 20 years?” Asking who? Me? Well, I guess I’m not qualified to answer that question since I presently do not use TVA electricity.
But if I were still using it, here’s what I’d say:
· TVA, you are the experts in this field and you want me, the one that flips light switches on (and not as much off) to give you the answers? That’s like going to the doctor and the doctor asking me how to be more technically proficient as a health care provider. Or my mechanic asking, “Do you think I’m skilled enough in my mechanic’s training to work on your car?” Enough already.
· TVA, you are blowing nothing but pure smoke. I do know that you have spent millions of ratepayer dollars on consultants to figure out how to get out of possible criminal liability.
· TVA, you know very well that since you have cut back to but one planned nuclear plant in Alabama, (Bellefonte), that the nuclear option will not play as significant a role as it once did and not in the next 20 years. Is it necessary to ask me about your already made decision?
· TVA, my personal preference would be for less dependence on huge electrical grids that are now known to be vulnerable to cyber attack and to be dependent more on my private initiative. That might mean a solar generating system which would store pressurized water for use at night to run a small generator; a recirculation system that is available now. And not to worry about “selling” excess electricity to the grid. Small localized systems relying only on themselves could be another alternative.
· TVA, I am old enough to have lived in an era when we had no electricity in our farm home and it was not primitive living. Although we were happy to eventually get REA power, we survived quite well without it and could do so today, if necessary, even in the city.
· TVA, you are dreaming if you believe someone is going to come up with a magic wand and whisk you back to a Utopian world where everyone is again grateful for the power you bring.
· TVA, I see a different future for you, one that will probably slap your face into a reality mode much sooner than later. That reality is the dissolution of TVA because you cannot survive the present circumstances of an over-leveraged financial structure and still keep electricity rates “as low as possible”. That simply is not possible.
· TVA, look at yourself in a larger context; you represent the anachronistic production model. Build plants, run wires and keep pumping voltage. Other utilities are doing much the same.
· TVA, I do not know what electrical distribution systems will look like in the next 20 years but I’ll bet they will be significantly different from today’s old model. Neither you nor I know those answers and based on past experience I do not believe your capabilities are up to finding them.
TVA wants answers and all it gets are more and more questions.
Ernest Norsworthy
emnorsworthy@earthlink.net
http://norsworthyopinion.com