Extraordinary Profits Made at Vermont Yankee In Last Year.

Why are they shuttting down VY?   

 U.S. electricity prices maybe going up for good

The electrical system’s duress was a direct result of the polar vortex, the cold air mass that settled over the nation. But it exposed a more fundamental problem. There is a growing fragility in the U.S. electricity system, experts warn, the result of the shutdown of coal-fired plants, reductions in nuclear power, a shift to more expensive renewable energy and natural gas pipeline constraints. The result is likely to be future price shocks. And they may not be temporary. - See more at: http://columbiadailyherald.com/news/nation/us-electricity-prices-may-be-going-good#sthash.oAjV7rqM.dpuf

I”ve been saying this for the last month or so. I’ll bet you this past year per megawatt Vermont Yankee has been the most profitable nuclear plant in Entergy’s fleet.

I’ll bet you VY made the most money they even made this past year...

For the next decade, NEISO prices are supposed to skyrocket...

Poor regulatory oversight of natural gas...

FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller: Rolling Blackouts “Are aPossibility,” Thanks to EPA’s Utility MACT

VY has parting present for GMP:$17M

Terri Hallenbeck, Free Press Staff Writer 5:38 p.m. EDT April 25, 2014

MONTPELIER – It’s not every day you get a letter like Green Mountain Power Corp. received Thursday that’s actually not a scam.

“Please contact me at your earliest convenience to arrange receipt of the above referenced payment,” the letter from Entergy Vice President Marc Potkin ended. The above-referenced payment is for $17.8 million.

Green Mountain Power, the state’s largest utility, will receive much, if not all, that money from Entergy Corp., owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, as part of a revenue-sharing agreement made during the 2002 sale of the plant to Entergy from the group of utilities that had owned the plant.

“It’s great news for our customers,” said Dorothy Schnure, spokeswoman for Green Mountain Power. “All the money we are entitled to will go to ratepayers.”

The money represents the first — and likely last — time the revenue-sharing has kicked in. Vermont Yankee is slated to close at the end of the year. Entergy announced last year that the plant was no longer economically viable to run.

The money comes as a result of unusually high market prices for nuclear power this past winter, said Chris Recchia, commissioner of the state Department of Public Service. Because Entergy is gearing up to close Vermont Yankee, the company was selling power on the open market rather than through contracts and benefited from the higher prices, he said.

Recchia said his department is looking into whether Green Mountain Power receives all the money or if there are other former owners of the plant that are eligible for some, a process he described as “complicated.” Two of the biggest former owners were Green Mountain Power and Central Vermont Public Service Corp., which has since merged with Green Mountain Power.

Whoever they end of being, the former owners are entitled to a total of $17,886,739.49, according to Potkin’s letter.

Under the revenue-sharing agreement, if Vermont Yankee extended its operating license beyond 2012, the former owners would receive 50 percent of any revenue from power sold for more than $61 per megawatt for 10 years. Vermont Yankee has continued operating beyond 2012, even as the state tried to shut the plant down and the plant technically lacked a state certificate of public good until this year.

The $17.8 million Entergy is sharing represents the “excess revenue”Vermont Yankee earned from March 13, 2013, to March 12, 2014, Potkin said in the letter to Green Mountain Power. Nuclear power prices were too low for there to be any revenue sharing the year before, so this constitutes the first time the agreement has kicked in, Recchia said.

When state officials were arguing in recent years that Vermont Yankee should not be granted a 20-year license extension, one of their arguments that the extension was not in the public’s interest was that they doubted prices would ever be high enough for Vermont utilities to receive any revenue sharing before the agreement ended in 2020.