Back at the end of 2014, Chatty Chuck Jones was poised to take over as CEO of FirstEnergy.  At that time, I wrote:

And on Thursday night, the FirstEnergy Board hawked up a big one.

FirstEnergy fired Jones and two others in the wake of the bribery scandal involving Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder, and on the same day two others plead guilty, including a FirstEnergy lobbyist.

A couple months ago, Chatty Chuck denied FirstEnergy had done anything wrong in the scandal, however I think some indictment documents said that the FirstEnergy CEO was chauffeured to the scene of some evil deed or other so that he could see it for himself.  I guess that was sort of like sitting in the outdoor seats at a Browns game even though you had a perfectly good VIP Suite from which to watch the game.  Oooh!  A daring risk-taker!

If FirstEnergy did nothing wrong, how is it that Chatty Chuck and friends did something wrong?

Looks like Chatty Chuck gets to eat the spitty mashed potatoes on FirstEnergy's plate. 

Don't cry for Chatty Chuck though... he's made a bundle.

Who else got sacrificed to save FirstEnergy's bacon? 

Never heard of Chack, but Dowling sounds familiar.  Hmm.... where have I seen that name before?  I know!  It was woven through FirstEnergy's 270,000+ page data dump in the PATH case.  I am so not surprised.

All utilities thrive on corruption in one form or the other.  It's all about regulatory capture.  Although regulation is part of the bargain utilities strike in order to maintain their monopolies, there's also a driving need to make money.  These two things cannot co-exist.

So, what's next for Chatty Chuck?  Maybe he can wait tables and collect some cash for keeping his mouth shut about diner conversations.  Or maybe he can sweep up at FirstEnergy stadium to keep busy?  Or maybe he'll just retire.  I'm kind of wondering how close the trio of terror were to retirement anyhow?  Not a spring chicken among them.

And can we sing this old favorite once again?

No, not him!  Although communities invaded by this big, green beast often feel like he's been rampaging in their neighborhood.  I'm talking about the "renewable energy" big, green beast.  The beast that's currently fat with tax credit cash paid for by you.  Ever heard the old saying about not feeding stray pests because they keep hanging around expecting a meal?  Well, that's just what renewable energy developers are doing now.  Because taxpayers have financed the construction of their wind farms through tax credits, now the developers want electric ratepayers to finance their costs to transmit their product as well.

What's the problem?  Traditionally, a new generator must pay its costs to interconnect to the existing transmission system.  This includes any new lines from the generator to an existing transmission line, plus any upgrades or new transmission caused by the new injection of additional power to the system.  Say the interconnection of 4,000 MW of wind from Guymon, OK to Indiana causes the need to build a brand new 765kV transmission line in Indiana in order to handle the additional load... the generator in Guymon would have to pay for the upgrade.  Does that sound fair to you?  Let's examine...

The generator at Guymon is producing power for export and expecting a huge profit because its cost to produce is extremely low and the price of power purchased in Indiana is extremely high.  But did anyone in Indiana contract to purchase this power, plus the cost of transmission?  No, they didn't, so the generator proposes that the cost of the transmission upgrades be paid for by electric customers in Indiana, who may or may not use the power transmitted over the new line.  Long-standing rules for transmission cost allocation -- beneficiary pays.  So, unless Guymon can prove that all the ratepayers receive a benefit, they cannot assign costs this way.

In addition, who says the Guymon generation is needed in Indiana or elsewhere?  It's the regional transmission organization that orders new transmission to be built and assigns costs to ratepayers.  The RTO can only order new transmission and assign costs for projects needed for reliability, economic, or public policy purposes.  If that need isn't there (and it's not... the PJM RTO has not ordered nor accepted costs for transmission for import) then it will not order a new project and assign costs.  Generators and renewable energy developers do not order projects, assign costs, and determine who must buy their power.  Claiming that the power they generate in Guymon is "desperately needed" in NYC and therefore ratepayers in Oklahoma City should pay for new transmission to get it there is a bridge too far.  Who decides where the power they buy comes from?  The purchaser, and to some extent the state.  State energy policy may call for wholesale purchasers (the company who supplies your power) to purchase a certain amount of renewable power.  That does not mean, however, that the state has demanded renewables from Guymon.  States are getting smart about energy and many who have set renewable mandates know exactly where the power should come from... and it's from new renewables in state or in the local region.  Not one state has set a target that it expects to have fulfilled by generators thousands of miles away.  Go on with your stupid "where it's needed" claims.  It's not up to renewable developers to determine where their power is "needed."

And let's not forget the logic of economics.  New generators are for-profit endeavors.  The cost to construct, connect, and operate must be less than the price the generator can charge for power.  If these costs are more than the value of the power produced, then the generator is not economic and won't be built because nobody builds a new business that it expects would lose money.  So, in this recent article, generators are whining that the cost of transmission interconnection and upgrade is too much and causes the cancellation of their projects because it makes them uneconomic.  But yet they want ratepayers to pick up their interconnection and upgrade costs so that their uneconomic generators suddenly become economic.  Let's not avoid the elephant in the room...

IF IT'S TOO EXPENSIVE FOR GENERATORS TO OPERATE ECONOMICALLY, IT'S TOO EXPENSIVE FOR RATEPAYERS TO PAY FOR ECONOMICALLY!

The ratepayers would pay for it either way, of course, whether wrapped into the cost of the power from Guymon, or secretly added to their bill in the form of higher transmission cost.  However, when it's presented as high-cost power from Guymon, wholesale buyers say "no."  But when it's slipped into everyone's electric bill without notice, they have no opportunity to say "no."

Perhaps this is also another Trojan Horse... by trying to foist their interconnection costs onto regional ratepayers who won't benefit from the new transmission, are renewable developers looking to have their merchant projects become RTO-ordered projects so they can be cost allocated?  Currently merchant projects are paid for by their owners.  So, what would happen to a merchant project that wanted to connect?  Should an RTO anticipate merchant projects and plan for them?  Get outta here... that's ridiculous! 

Energy decisions are made by elected officials, state utility commissions, and customers.  They aren't made by corporations who want to make money selling energy.

Be careful how you vote, transmission opponents.  The greedy schemers who build and own transmission want to lock in many more years of profit for themselves while strangling more localized energy supply that they can't profit from.

This article reveals the scheming going on at a recent Energy Bar Association conference, where the players expressed angst that

So, if we continue to reject huge, new greenfield transmission projects, other solutions will manifest themselves?  Perhaps more local, distributed and democratic solutions that don't enrich huge bloated investor-owned utility conglomerates?  Tell me more!!

This isn't something new.  These greedsters have been hyperventilating over it for nearly a decade now.  Way back in 2013 the lobbying organization for investor-owned utilities published a paper titled "Disruptive Challenges" that predicted a mass exodus from large, centralized power suppliers and new reliance on local, distributed resources.  And apparently the concept is still scaring them silly because it's truer than ever.  Streetcars, film cameras, and land line telephones are soon going to be joined in the dinosaur zoo by investor-owned utilities.

But can they stop it by building a whole bunch of new transmission with decades of crushing, new utility debt that would be paid by customers under current regulatory schemes?  No.  Read the report... the more the utilities build centralized infrastructure, the higher electric rates climb.  And the higher rates climb, the more attractive investments in localized power sources become.  As customers leave, others must assume their share of the debt, further increasing costs and making local investments even more attractive.  The more people leave, the more people will leave.  Like a snowball rolling down hill... until nobody is left to pay the utility debt and the transmission owner goes belly up.  It can happen.  It will happen.  Trying to stop it by building new transmission is like trying to stop a speeding bus by jumping in front of it.  Dumb!  Dumbest idea ever!

So, what's the real problem?

Big Transmission is dead.  Transmission opposition is a huge success story.  They can't get any new, big projects built... because of us.  The focus now is on devising ways to thwart us.  Ways to step on our necks while they use federal eminent domain to take our property for their unneeded, for-profit renewable energy transmission lines. 

For a hot minute, there was hope among them that states would come together to support their money-making scheme to build a bunch of new transmission to ship renewables thousands of miles.  It was only an unrealistic pipe dream.  States aren't giving away their independence to make their own energy policy decisions, like allowing renewable energy companies or the federal government to decide where their energy comes from, or whether they should become a fly-over highway for energy sales between other states.  States are becoming increasingly active participants in directing their own energy decisions.  Need renewables?  Build them instate and keep the economic development and energy dollars at home!  State are no longer passive parasites expecting someone else to provide for their energy needs from far away.   Clean Line Energy Partners spent a decade trying to sell transmission capacity for just such a scheme and ended up with no takers.  It doesn't work!

Now the greedsters have a new scheme.  Pie-in-the-sky dreams of passing new legislation making transmission siting and permitting a federal responsibility.

In a nutshell, let's anoint the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission with the power to pick winners and losers in energy resource games and render the states as passive consumers?  Not a chance!  Been there, done that.

Emery has no clue what Congress intended to do, and it's not her job to interpret their "intentions."  That's a job for the courts, and a court determined that Congress only intended to give FERC backstop siting authority when a state could or would not act.  Denying a permit for new transmission is an action, therefore denials do not create FERC authority.  Over and done!

But this is an avenue that the greedy utilities now want to explore anew.  Would Congress really take transmission siting and permitting authority away from states?  Seems like a hard sell, considering that Congress is composed of state representatives.  How much lobbying and corruption would it take for state representatives to sell their states down river and get booted out of office at the next election?  The pushback from the voters on just such a scheme would be huge.  Be careful how you vote!

What?  Snow in September?  Climate change does the strangest things lately.  Maybe no Kansans noticed any accumulation of the white stuff at their homes yesterday, but there was a blizzard going on on Zoom... a virtual snow job!

Invenergy has a big problem in Kansas.  Its existing permit for Grain Belt Express issued by the Kansas Corporation Commission is going to need some extensive updates to remove original conditions.  One condition was that the company must have the project permitted in all 4 states before beginning construction in Kansas.  Another was that no Kansans would pay for the transmission line project.  But Invenergy has a new plan so unlike the original project the KCC vetted and permitted that it needs to remove those conditions.  And what better way to get the captured KCC to look the other way and eliminate the conditions designed to protect Kansans than to get the Governor onboard?

Yesterday, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly announced that Kansas has "partnered with Invergy to bring the transmission line, which is 800-miles long, to the state."  800-miles you say?  Is it going to go round and round inside Kansas in a big circle?  According to GBE's website, the project will be "380+ miles" in Kansas.  It is proposed as 800-miles from Kansas to Indiana.  Except Invenergy still hasn't applied for a permit to cross 200-miles through Illinois.  Therefore, it's only 580-miles across Kansas and Missouri.  In fact, that's the only thing Invenergy has committed to so far, and it wants to begin construction before even applying to cross Illinois.  Therefore, its project is not 800-miles long, it's only 580-miles, less the distance between the Missouri converter station and the eastern border of the state.

This is only the beginning of the inaccurate dreck spewed at yesterday's virtual press conference.  It gets even crazier.

Oh, it's a new project?  Not the same old Grain Belt Express that's been languishing in the land of failed ideas since 2012?  It's going to be connected to the Grain Belt Express?  Say what?  It looks like the press conference failed so completely at delivering facts that at least one media outlet thinks its some separate new project (with the same name?).  The media didn't do its job yesterday by fact checking any of this.  Whether that's through sheer ignorance and laziness, or through lack of opportunity to ask questions, the readers may never know.  If you watch the Zoom meeting, they open it up to questions from the media at the end.  Only one reporter got to ask questions before they were "out of time" (or simply out of questions).  The reporter asked what kind of qualifications or skills Kansans would need to get a job on the project.  Kris Zadlo from Invenergy non-answered that by claiming Invenergy would prefer to hire locally as much as possible.  That's not an answer to that question!  The other question was about how the promised $50/year savings per electric customer would flow through on the bills for Evergy customers.  Zadlo said something about Evergy first having to purchase the renewable energy before flowing the savings through to customers.  That's also not an answer.

Let's tackle the second question first...  GBE is a transmission line.  It's not a generator of renewable energy.  Evergy would have to purchase capacity on GBE's transmission line, and then separately purchase renewable energy to transmit on GBE from a separate renewable energy generator.  In fact, I haven't seen any indication that this has happened.  Purchasing transmission capacity on GBE and renewable energy from a generator is completely voluntary.  Evergy may or may not do it.  If Evergy doesn't do it, there is no savings.  And even if Evergy does, there is no guarantee of whether, or how much, "savings" Evergy would pass along to its end-use customers.  Poof!  There goes that $50 savings.  It's hypothetical upon hypothetical upon voluntarily hypothetical.  Reality check!  Investor-owned utilities like Evergy don't make their money buying product from Chicago-based companies and passing the expense onto Kansans... they make their money by OWNING the infrastructure that generates and transmits energy supplied to their customers.  Kansas energy transmitted to customers over Kansas transmission lines owned by a Kansas company keeps Kansans energy dollars in Kansas.  It doesn't export Kansas energy profits to Chicago.

The second question was premised on the Governor's claim (which supposedly came from an Invenergy study) that Grain Belt Express would create over 22,000 jobs in Kansas during the construction period, and nearly 1,000 permanent, full-time operations jobs in Kansas after construction.  Let's get to the short answer here first... new construction jobs for Kansans.  Building high voltage transmission is a highly specialized job skill.  Workers with this skill are employed by a handful of companies across the country.  The transmission company hires one of these specialized construction companies to build a line, and the workers are shipped in only for the duration of construction.  So, what Zadlo was saying is... if their selected contractor from another state has Kansans on the payroll, then a Kansan would have a job constructing the project.  In fact, Zadlo would "prefer" that.  What won't happen is mass hiring of Kansans with limited or no skills to construct GBE.  Jobs for Kansans?  Hardly.

But let's look at the job claims, which come completely out of left field and thoroughly out of line with previous job claims.  22,000.  Twenty two thousand?  Previous construction job claims for GBE totaled only 1,500 in the state of Missouri.  One thousand five hundred.  Granted Kansas has nearly double the line miles proposed for Missouri, but the Kansas claim is more than 14 times the jobs claimed for Missouri!  For every job created in Missouri, there will be more than 14 created in Kansas to construct the same project over similar terrain.  Something doesn't smell right here....  And then let's move on to post-construction operations jobs.  The same Missouri report found only 91 operations jobs.  However, the Kansas claims from yesterday are 10 times that at 968!  For every Missouri job operating and maintaining GBE, Kansas will need 10 people to do that same job.  A reasonable person might question these numbers.  An even more reasonable person would know that these numbers aren't real jobs.  They're nothing but numbers spit out of a computer program based on economic data fed into an equation that's not revealed.  Simply adjust the numbers, and the result changes.  Garbage in, garbage out!  So, what is going to happen afterwards when these jobs don't materialize?  Nothing.  The damage will have been done and the rewards will have failed to materialize.  So sorry, suckers!

And can we talk about what GBE actually IS for a hot minute?  Zadlo claimed:

Although he did mention that GBE is a direct current (DC) transmission line, nobody else in Zoom-land seemed to know what that meant, therefore nobody questioned the faulty narrative.

A DC transmission line is a closed highway between converter stations with no entrance or exit ramps along the way.  Electricity is produced as alternating current (AC).  It must be converted to DC at a hugely-expensive converter station (say $100M) before it can be transmitted on the line.  It cannot be connected to our existing AC transmission system or used until is is converted back to AC at another equally expensive converter station at the delivery end.  GBE's plan calls for building a converter station at the Spearville end of the route to convert AC to DC and send it on its way east.  GBE's plan calls for ONE converter station at the delivery end to convert it back to AC.  That converter station is proposed for somewhere in eastern Missouri.  If the project is eventually extended to Indiana, there will be a third converter constructed at the IL/IN border.  Electricity transmitted over the line can ONLY be used after it has reached a converter station and been converted back to AC.  So, when the Governor says that the electricity on GBE will create a savings for and be used by Kansas electric consumers, she's saying that electricity produced at Spearville will be sent to eastern Missouri over GBE, where it will be converted back to AC and then shipped back to Kansas on the existing transmission system?  Let's see if we can follow the path of all that "home-grown" energy from Spearville to... say... Wichita.  Spearville to Randolph Co. Missouri to Wichita?  It can't go directly from Spearville to Wichita unless GBE builds a converter station in Wichita.  If the electricity is sent directly to Wichita, it would travel only on our existing AC transmission system, and we wouldn't need GBE at all.

Basic physics sailed clear over the heads of the Kansas officials and reporters.  Only Kris Zadlo knew the truth, and he wasn't sharing.  What a great guy!

Perhaps this is the greatest quote of the whole debacle:

There sure is a lot of wind in Kansas.  Whistling around on Zoom and between the ears of some folks too stupid to know they're being had.  What a waste of time!