Talk:Power Marketing Administration

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I am thankful for this article but notice that many basic questions remain unanswered. I do not feel comfortable making edits to the article myself at this point, but would like to note points here for "all" to see.

For one, the article states that a PMA has "...responsibility for marketing hydropower, primarily from multiple-purpose water projects operated by the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the International Boundary and Water Commission."

This makes it sound as if a PMA is exclusively a "marketer" - i.e., spends all of its time selling electricity. But, from my reading, I understand that individual PMAs, such as the Bonneville Power Administration, are responsible for everything from running the Grand Coulee Dam to initiating and realizing power line construction and maintenance.

Similarly, it sounds as if it the authorities only "touches" hydro power. Is this true?

The article further states "Power marketing began in the early 1900s when power from federal water projects in excess of project needs was sold in order to repay the government's investment in the projects." But there is no mention of the amount of money this represents at any given time or over the course of the administrations' history.

It goes on "There are four federal PMAs, which market and deliver power to 34 states:" Which states? Why not all in the lower 48? Does it deliver power to Canada or Mexico?

In short, I would hope the article could provide more contextual information. How much of the US electricity demand is serviced by PMA entities? Which private and public entities are the primary participants interacting with the four PMAs? How do the various PMA entities differ (BPA is described as "self-funding" but this aspect is not mentioned for the other entities).

Each of the "daughter articles" provide some of the details that would help fill in my questions in the main article (e.g. BPA serves 4 states and does in fact sell electricity to Canada). But each of the articles has its own "style" and emphasis, 3 of the 4 start with an historical note ("BPA was created by an act of Congress in 1937...") but the article on WAPA does not mention its history (the WAPA website implies that it was created at the same time as the DoE came into being Dec. 21, 1977).

So it would be good to describe each of the four authorities (BPA, WAPA, SWPA and SEPA) such as to mention the region served, relative importance, interactions with other important entities, key people and explicit differences that may exist between each of the authorities. And the daughter articles could each be improved by adopting a uniform template and adding tables for key stats.

The generation and distribution of electricity in North America is certainly a complex subject, but it is also very important and I hope there will be more wikipedians willing to devote time to developing these pages! Johnfravolda (talk) 23:52, 23 January 2009 (UTC)