Hooking up with SMUD

By Jack Byrom
For various reasons, including a desire to live with friends who share similar values, I found myself recently packing up and moving to Sacramento, California. On the face of it, I wouldn`t have picked Sacramento as a great place to live, but there is certainly more to this city than blistering hot summers and Interstate 80 backups. One of the truly unique features of the area is SMUD, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. Years ago, before solar power was really hip, I remember my always progressive brother-then in Carbondale, Colorado-telling me about this wonderful entity with the strange name of "SMUD". I vaguely recall brother Glen waxing poetically about "solar gen portfolios" and "net-metering", rather arcane topics I might have theoretically been familiar with. Well, in the post-Enron and -Inconvenient Truth era, suddenly the question of how and where you get your power is not so academic.
So it was with pleasure that I picked up the phone and called to start residential electrical service with SMUD. SMUD is one of those interesting agencies often called "public power" utilities, as opposed to investor-owned utilities (IOU`s), which are listed on Wall Street stock exchanges and seemingly run by investors and executives with no other concern in life but increasing the dollar value of their own investments. Publicly owned utilities, on the other hand, are owned and controlled by the members, a situation which many think leads to better service and value.
One of the more well-known public power utilities was Cleveland Muny Light (now Cleveland Public Power), made famous in the late 1970s by the "boy wonder" mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, Dennis Kucinich, who refused to bow down to a powerful cabal of bankers and a for-profit utility company, who tried to take the public utility private, by force. Public power may have been worth fighting for, although the battle did cost Kucinich dearly. Years later, independent observers say it appeared that his battle may have been worth it, with Cleveland utility rates significantly lower than those of surrounding areas served by the IOU First Energy Corp (also the operator of the infamous Davis-Besse reactor of northwest Ohio).
SMUD electrical rates are apparently stable and reasonable, definitely a concern in many places (especially California) with the advent of utility deregulation and recent dramas such as the artificial manipulation of power prices by the now-disgraced Enron Corporation. My base rate will be less than 10 cents a kilowatt hour, a real bargain, and definitely cheaper than those of most of the state, generally only served by a couple of heavyweight utilities, such as PG&E. [SMUD uses a tiered rate structure, with residential prices of 9 cents a kW-hr for the first 600 to 700 kW-hrs of usage, then increasing to 16 cents kW-hr after about 600 kW hours of usage, depending on whether it is the summer or winter season.] PG&E of course has been made famous-or infamous--over the last few years by the high prices it was (perhaps, sort of) forced to charge back in the early 2000s (partially due to high-priced natural gas from Enron) and by the movie and true story of Erin Brockovich. Oh yes, let`s not forget the rolling summer blackouts of that time, too. I was more than eager not to have to buy electricity from PG&E, although a nice enough PG&E technician did come out and turn on the natural gas to my apartment. SMUD claims its rates are 29% cheaper than those of PG&E in surrounding counties, and this seems believable enough.
What about green energy? Well, SMUD has definitely made a name for itself as a utility that has encouraged customers to install their own solar photovoltaics on-site, with a well-regarded net-metering and rebate program. An impressive map of distributed power generation for the district can be viewed at http://smud.solarmap.org/map.html. Why not, in a place with such abundant solar energy ["100 % natural nuclear!"]. When you look at the actual numbers for this utility's green energy generation, they at first are somewhat disappointing, but if you compare them with those of other utilities, they become more impressive. For instance, while SMUD's 2009 estimated green power portfolio (wind, solar, biomass, etc.) is only 19% of its generation output, compare this with the rest of the state, on average at only about 10% of generation output. And while in other states, such as Ohio and Indiana, coal burning generates a large percentage of locally produced power, for the 1 million people SMUD serves, coal burning will only amount to 1% of the 2009 generation total (source: Center for Resource Solutions, San Francisco, CA). The bulk of generation in 2009 will come from natural gas generation, at 60% of the portfolio, not a renewable energy source, but immensely more environmentally friendly than burning coal. SMUD also has very significant large hydropower generation resources on the Sierra Nevada-draining Upper American River, and has gone out of its way to encourage conservation, with a tree-planting program and extensive conservation education programs. Oh, and one more thing, SMUD did have a big nuclear plant back in the 1970s and 1980s, but it was closed in 1989, and the area is now a park and site for a huge natural gas power plant and smaller solar generation facility.
All in all, I am very happy to be a new SMUD customer. It does matter where your power comes from, and I am glad to know my lights and computer are being powered by energy coming from a company with more than short-term profit as its creed. SMUD public power is a great model for how a utility company can be run, and it`s nice to know that I as a member help control this utility, especially with the pro-nuclear power nuts out there furiously peddling their wares. This is the power that perhaps even charges California first lady Maria Shriver`s famous cell phone (even though she now keeps it under wraps when driving).