WAPA is the worst excuse for a power company ever!

Actually, your comment isn't "damning", -- it supports the contention that WAPA can't compete with other fossil fuels BECAUSE there is no economy of scale. The hotels are a prime example of this. Rather, what it needs to do is move AWAY from fossil fuels...because it can't compete with them.

If WAPA would go solar and wind, then they can achieve an economy of scale -of a different sort because they can commandeer REAL ESTATE sufficient enough, whereas the average hotel doesn't want to put up 3 giant turbines in their parking lot.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here...my points are:

-both WAPA and private interests use fossil fuels to generate power. WAPA should have a very significant advantage due to its broad customer base, its relatively efficient turbine generation equipment (compared to the piston-driven generation equipment at the various resorts) and the various grants and federal incentives toward efficiency. Yet despite these advantages WAPA cannot compete with small hotels which can generate their own electricity and distribute it around their property more cheaply and more reliably without incentives and despite the relative inefficiency of the equipment at that scale.

-an economy of scale means that the more customers one has for a product or service, the greater the savings can be. WAPA should have the advantage on every single aspect of power generation and delivery. The cost of consumables, maintenance, distribution, manpower, should all be vastly lower per kWh for WAPA than for a small hotel.

-people use the 'small island' argument to justify WAPA's high cost and inefficiency, but the even smaller hotels which have perhaps less than 1/1000th the electrical capacity WAPA has on STX have found it economical to go off the grid way back when fuel oil was 20% of its current price.

I fully agree that WAPA and everyone else needs to move away from fossil fuels, although a near-term solution would be to streamline WAPAs operations and management. There is no reason whatsoever that residential customers should be paying more than 1/4th of what we currently pay.