Local opinion: Marquez Peterson puts hot potato in ACC's lap

Lea Marquez Peterson of the Arizona Corporation Commission says she wants AI to help monopoly utilities improve grid efficiency — improve storm response, customer systems, asset management, energy loads, water demand planning, and procurement and infrastructure maintenance.

She’s going to have a real fight on her hands. These monopoly utilities all make perverse amounts of money by gold-plating as much as possible, choosing the most expensive ways of doing business and sticking it to ratepayers with their chosen excesses — making about 10% on every single one of their ACC-approved expenses. That is their bread and butter.

So why in the world would TEP or APS voluntarily choose to have AI improve grid efficiency — studies showing 20% to 35% improvements — when they can just build more poles and wires and substations to produce more needed load capacity? And make a whopping profit off spending the huge amounts that it costs? More load? That buck stops at ratepayers' wallets. So, her idea of improving efficiency using AI will be dead on arrival. The utilities will fight that pole by pole and wire by wire. If there's no profit, it's a non-starter.

But Marquez Peterson can’t selectively use AI to implement only a few things at the margin — which even by ACC's low bar standards would be disingenuous. No, if you're going to use the power of AI, you have to go all in for an integrated plan, and not just for the few pieces that dovetail with your political ideology.

This ACC paralyzed energy efficiency in Arizona by slashing utility demand-side efficiency budgets and deleting established renewable energy standard rules, knowing full well that energy efficiency is the number one most effective way to reduce ratepayer bills. So, if Marquez Peterson really means what she says in her new docket for AI efficiency, then she will be butting heads with other commissioners who for whatever reason genuflect to monopoly utility positions on efficiency as though they were delivered from behind a burning bush.

You have to ask yourself: What model is the ACC using to make these executive decisions on energy efficiency, net metering, and grid efficiency? They hate California, find Texas too wild, reject innovation from New England — whether not like Arizona — and can't even consider neighboring New Mexico because they produce oil and we don't. They're always finding excuses to reject successful examples. End result? ACC just cowboys it, relying on no real-world models, just marching in lockstep with the political ideology of the most vocal among them. And how are any of these commissioners qualified to weigh in on the kind of high-tech issues now dominating the energy landscape?

Marquez Peterson herself is only at high-tech level 101, scrambling for information and attending workshops to get a grip on this. In commie-infested left-wing Iowa they’ve increased grid efficiency by 20% utilizing energy efficiency. That’s not like 20% off of a pair of pants. That’s big money savings directly reducing ratepayer burdens. Iowa customers have saved more than 318 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, 906,600 therms of natural gas, and benefited from over $114 million in energy efficiency programs and rebates over their 5-year plan.

Here? We’re setting fire, literally and figuratively, to any grid efficiency whatsoever by increasing our burning of fossil fuels — the exact opposite of Iowa's demonstrated successes.

Rise up Arizonans. You’re getting screwed. Vote out the two ACC incumbents now up for reelection along with the right-wing extremist legislators who support them. Vote in candidates who will do something to actually reduce your bills instead of pandering to your identity politics. Follow the money. It’s not flowing to you; it’s flowing like a gusher to shareholders who see a slam-dunk investment: Arizona monopoly utilities with near 50/50 debt/equity ratios that do business with practically zero risk while earning 10% profit on pretty much most everything they buy and build.

It’s up to Lea Marquez Peterson to walk her talk. Mandate that Arizona investor-owned utilities make the grid 20% more efficient. Model red-state Iowa’s energy efficiency savings and reduce Arizonans’ monthly bills.