Power plays

Because recent environmental lawsuits blocked solar projects in the California desert, utility companies there will be lucky to get halfway to their state-imposed mandate of 30 percent power generation from renewable sources anytime soon. NV Energy thus sees an opportunity to sell higher-priced electricity from Nevada solar, geothermal and wind farms to California.

The firm proposed a bill — Senate Bill 488 — that would have let them build the line without prior approval by Nevada’s Public Utilities Commission.

But in a May 19 letter to lawmakers, Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto noted that if Senate Bill 488 were to pass and “NV Energy’s plans are not fully successful, Nevada ratepayers could bear a substantial portion of the $1 billion estimated cost. This is a significant risk to ratepayers.”

So when it became clear SB488 wasn’t moving in the Assembly, backers simply waited till any watchdog who might object was out of the room at session’s end, whereupon they proceeded to pull out the parts they wanted from the dead SB488 and “amend” those parts into AB416, a bill that had already passed the Assembly.

At which point, their new creature needed only passage in the Senate — which had already passed the power line plan — and concurrence on amendments to escape the Legislature.

“If it doesn’t pan out, the ratepayers will end up paying the bill,” said Eric Witkoski, consumer advocate in the attorney general’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, the day after the Legislature adjourned. “The first time we got wind of it was at midnight (Monday).”

In fact, the bill won final Senate passage in a 16-5 vote at 12:39 a.m. Tuesday, 21 minutes before the legislative session concluded. Sound like open government?

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission tends to be skeptical of local power companies building transmission lines to send power out of their service areas — especially when private entrepreneurs stand ready to try. Such caution is even more justified when the lines in question would serve no purpose but to ship overpriced “alternative” energy, when California utilities will likely drop such high-cost sources whenever such top-down portfolio mandates disappear.

Gov. Brian Sandoval should veto AB416.