The role of government Heidi Harris of KDWN in Las Vegas in a promo is talking about the limited role role of government – on her short list of necessary functions was “run the power companies and utilities”
In most places in the country, goverment does not own or operate utilities. My eletric, gas, phone and water are all private companies – the city does run the sewage system. Garbage is collected by a private company.
There has been a stealth campaign to nationalize electricity by using the term “the nation’s power grid” – as if it is President Obama’s job to construct power lines to interconnect privately owned power companies.
When you create a huge new directorate like Homeland Security they tend to run out of work unless they’re constantly given new projects to feed on. The electrical power grid is part of the nation’s “critical infrastructure” that politicians love to talk about so often. In their minds the surest way to protect something is for the government to take direct control of it. In Ms. Harris’s defense, in many of the western states the power companies are quasi-government agencies modeled after the TVA. I don’t agree that limited government should be running all the utility companies, but I understand how that misconception could occur in Las Vegas where much of their electrical power has been obtained from Hoover Dam.
The power company for Las Vegas is NV Energy, a company traded on the NYSE…. It gets only a small portion of its power from the Hoover dam (365 Megawatts). The large majority of the Hoover dam electric power goes to California. The TVA is also a power generator, not an electric utility – they sell the generated power on a wholesale basis to local power companies.
I tend to think of all electric utilities as also being “power generators”, but you’re absolutely correct. There are many utilities that are distribution only- they buy power on the wholesale market and distribute it to their local customers. Thanks for the correction on Hoover Dam not being the primary power supplier for Las Vegas. I did not know that!