Statistics are Like Bikinis, what they don't Reveal is more important than What They DO

Interesting to see the  City Newsletter publishing some hydro statistics, too bad they weren't comparative.   Notice the black is my representation of the percentage of fossil fuel that makes power in each jurisdiction.  Clearly this has nothing to do with comparing apples to apples.  What we do know is the lowest cost electricity comes from hydro power, the cleanest power.  I have no idea what is going on in Ottawa, although they have a power district that buys from Ontario Hydro to resell, Ontario hydro now has the highest power in Canada, they have to pay for all that subsidized solar and wind somehow, google  Ontario solar failure and read about it.

                                            Smoke and Mirrors

The latest city newsletter is showing comparison rates for electricity.   Cherry picking what
looks good for themselves. 

Nelson is the only city in western Canada with its own hydroelectric generation and distribution making huge profits, why are our electric rates so high?   Because they are set by mayor and council, a hidden tax pretending to be an electric bill.

  Lets look at  Chelan County, Wa.  south of us, they have their own power dam like Nelson.  It is organized under state statute as a non profit municipal corporation and functions as a

customer-owned public co-operative energy district. It is governed by a

Board of Commissioners elected by the customer-owners

 who as owners,

 receive dividends in the form of reduced rates. 

 Their residential retail rate for electricity just went to 3c/kWh vs our 10c/kWh. 

 Nelson hydro like Chelan county power is customer owned, are we seeing dividends? 

As a  municipal electric utility its mandate is to bring its ratepayers the most reliable and cheapest

power.. 

Who decides our rates? 

The mayor, city council and Alex Love manager of Nelson hydro, the highest paid person in the city.

                           Its easier to raise electric rates than it is to raise taxes.

I

Lake Country near Kelowna used even less only 1/2 the CPI in their business case for their Eldorado micro hydro project, well engineered, completly transparent, showing a payback in 7 years and making a profit.  Power from their city water intake system. 

Try to find an engineering report for the Nelson community solar garden, there was one, estimating costs $211,000 with a major error, fantasy data unsupportable by years of known data and it stated 

"not all costs are shown"?  and its now over $300,000, and hasn't begun.  There is an in depth accurate costing for the Greenhouse replacement costing nothing near the solar garden, you can see it starting about page 122  from the city Feb 2016 meeting agenda,,   can we see something like this for the solar garden?  It doesn't exist.  There never was a business case for the solar garden, its all about feel good politics.