Saturday, October 09, 2010

$100 Million Electricity Loss Due to Marijuana


According to BC Hydro, $100 million is lost each year due to marijuana grow-ops in British Columbia. This amounts to about 3% of the utility bills. The company plans to use smart meters to resolve the issue. There is no word on whether Fortis Inc. (FTS.TO) is affected by the problem. Fortis is the largest electric and gas utility in Canada, which serves British Columbia and several other provinces and the Caribbean.

At least the U.S. based utilities don't have that problem ... yet. But many have plenty of benefits, including high yields and reasonable price earnings to growth ratios. As an example, Hawaiian Electric Industries (HE) trades at thirteen times forward earnings and pays a CD beating yield of 5.4%. Hawaiian Electric is known for is use of green electrical generation including wind, solar, geothermal, wave, hydroelectric, sugarcane waste, and other biofuels. Latest reported earnings were up 89%.

American Electric Power Co., Inc. (AEP) pays 4.6% and trades at eleven times forward earnings. The company serves Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

For a free list of all the top yielding electric utilities, which can be downloaded, sorted, and added to, check out the list at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Disclosure: Author didn't own any of the above at the time the article was written.


By Stockerblog.com

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