I read with interest the article about the Snohomish County Public Utility District (“PUD eyeing conservation and innovation to meet growing energy need,” The Herald, Feb. 21). After reading the article, I felt as if I were reading something from past articles. This led me to the following.
For more than 20 years the PUD has supposedly been following a plan for conservation and and innovation. If the plan has existed, the subject article does not point out the progress of the plan? My guess is that the plan may contain more rhetoric.
This article reads like past articles that have been extracted from the PUD over these many years. The PUD has told consumers that the PUD is out there leading and working on issues that are good for them. The past year-to-year efforts have not been very successful. The PUD, in the past, may not have explained which improvements, especially cost-savings ones, should have served the user. The tidbits that the PUD has offered previously have been mostly marketing bites.
Some of the improvements mentioned in this article may already have been mentioned in past PUD articles. Some of them may not have had a good start. Some may not have been completed if they did get started. Some are projects/work that any reputable electric utility should be doing regularly with improvements being generated along the way. Nothing really new here.
Bottom line for a consumer? List or name the improvements that have saved money for the user. List the projects that have provided better service in the last two decades for the user. Not an easy task.
The list could be long, and too long for The Herald to publish. Maybe a review of past articles and/or PUD publications could point this out. Improvements, if made, have not generated savings that show up in my billing statement.
Unfortunately, we in Snohomish County do not have a choice for a provider of electric power. The article seems to indicate that PUD improvements and innovation cost savings for future years will create progress beyond the status quo. Perhaps a follow-up story by The Herald could lead to a more informative results.
I could be wrong.
Ignacio Castro Jr.
Edmonds
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