FPC Surprise

The Federal Power Commission, oldest and most vocal of U.S. shortagemongers, last week surprised everybody, blandly forecast a power surplus this year. It estimated the peak load next December at 36 million kilowatts; a total available supply of 44 million kilowatts. Thus FPC reversed its field strategy. Every year since 1935--mostly to prod along its own grandiose power-development schemes--FPC has gloomed that a nationwide power shortage was just around the next weekend.

For the present happy state, nature gets much of the credit. Ample rainfall has filled hydroelectric reservoirs (source of one-third all U.S. power) to the dam tops, in happy contrast to 1941, when severe droughts forced even mighty TVA to ration customers. Private power companies and municipalities also win a nosegay. In three years of war (1939-41) they spent $1,732,410,000 of their own cash for additions and improvements. But one of the biggest nosegays belongs to the New Deal and the FPC itself, whose dams have added 2 1/2 million kilowatts to the U.S. power pool since 1935.

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