What's really interesting was that until the Trojan nuclear plant was shut down, Oregon was an energy exporting state - we consistently generated more power than used.

Once Trojan was shut down, we started importing power and rates immediately jumped up (it didn't help that PGE was owned by Enron for about a decade, either.)

The environmentalists love to say that we don't need more power plants, just energy conservation and "demand-side management". Yet each year kwh usage goes up and up due to increasing loads by homes and businesses alike; population growth and larger homes, and so on. Using plug-in electric cars, trolleys/streetcars/light rail and so on, plus businesses that are heavily energy dependent (think: data centers with thousands of computer servers, and huge A/C systems) do not help.

Dams are the best thing we have and we're tearing them out. Coal is no good. Solar and wind are too erratic. Natural Gas is OK but expensive. Nuclear is expensive to start but cheap to run.

Yet the environmentalists have no problem with their big homes, because it's "all green power". Well, maybe they should tie their power to when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing - and they should be the first to elect an interruptable tariff so their meters remotely shut off at night (when solar doesn't generate) and during calm weather (when wind doesn't generate).........