The danger of saving energy

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Why do some of you seem to think it costs nothing to maintain the electric & gas lines coming in to your house? Or would you rather have them charge a couple of thousand or so to fix your line the one time a windstorm or something takes it out?

I can see your point but with the right hat you could cover it.

The fees on electicity and gas have gone up by a factor of 3x over the last 15 years. My wages have not gone up by a factor of 3x in the last 15 years, nor has the incidence of natural disasters gone up by a factor of 3 either.
There is more to this. Some of which is the low income heat fund which I do not disagree with but that fee is the much smaller of the two.

I used to live at a 16 plex, the landlord paid one single monthy fee plus the cost of gas and electric because heat / utilities were included.

At another 16 plex each person paid separate fees and paid for utilities.

The cost of a single commercial hookup versus several meters is significantly cheaper, but in reality costs the utility a minimal amount to maintain separate meters off the same pipe.

So although I agree with you to a point the trend has been for utilities to favor high volume users, the company I sit at right now pays 1/2 - 1/3 the amount per kwhr than I do and their fees are a small fraction of their electric cost.

There has been talk for a long time to charge graduated additional fees to low usage users and as of yet has not passed.

I do not think penalizing "Savers" is the right way of handling utlities.

Much the same way I strongly disagree in electric cars and hybrids paying an extra $50 for plates along with thousands of dollars extra during purchase.

Much the same way I strongly oppose people being fined for having and using a water barrel that the county encouraged them to purchase years ago.

Alas, I digress.

[aerostealth]

Building and using new generations capacity, or selling more gas every year is not a sustainable business model for the human race. As for low income energy assistance I view it as a utility welfare program. The poor should be assisted in insulating their homes and in buying more energy efficient appliances, not in paying high utility bills for leaky homes and energy wasting appliances. Even with record high wind and solar installations last year USA carbon emissions rose .7%. There has got to be a better way.

[Fat Charlie]

Originally Posted by aerostealth

As for low income energy assistance I view it as a utility welfare program.

+1

Helping the poor pay those bills doesn't help anyone but the people printing the bills. Pols absolutely hate welfare that helps poor people. They only like welfare that helps society's most helpless and maginalized, the shareholders.

[aerostealth]

That is not my point. My point is help to pay energy bills does nothing to reduce energy consumption. A low income person living in a poorly insulated house can have horrendous energy bill. The best solution is to fix the leaks not help to continue to pay for heating and cooling a energy wasting structure.

[Fat Charlie]

aerostealth- You're looking at what they could do better. I'm looking at why they don't do it that way.

[aerostealth]

I don't know why they do it that way. Obviously some lobbying got done so this welfare was turned around so it became corporate welfare. My better theory is that they are stupid because they don't have societies best interest at heart in mind over the long view. It is just a short term view that is unfortunately helping to warm the planet faster.

[MobilOne]

The only welfare the Pols are interested in is welfare that THEY receive!

[ksa8907]

I work in the utility industry. The fuel costs are very low. In fact for gas, i beleive it is illegal for the utility to mark up the cost of fuel. The only money made is on transportation costs. Money is also made if the utility operates a atorage field or lng plant.

For electric, the fuel costs (coal typically) is very very cheap. Utility bills currently are setup so that the typical use will pay the fixed costs and the variable cost (fuel) by using a per unit fee. The problem is low users pay less than what it costs to maintain the infrastructure and high users pay more.

[wdb]

The electric company isn't charging extra for maintaining the infrastructure and delivering the power; the structure of your bill simply exposes it to you. The utilities were required to unbundle their pricing during the 'deregulation' frenzy a few years ago (which they were strongly behind so they did this to themselves), and so now you see the costs as separate line items on your bill.

5 years ago I found a sweet deal on the power portion of my electric costs, but I had to lock into the price for 5 years. At the rate they were charging I said 'no problemo' and signed up. Recently that deal was done and I was once again on the market. Wait, did I say market? Basically there is no market. Everyone charges the same rate, unless they're shysters with short term 'teaser' rates and floating rates after that, in which case they're gouging you. All the folks offering straight up deals are within tenths of pennies of one another. Some market.

[aerostealth]

If we are ever to get to reducing our carbon foot prints we must stop rewarding large users and incentivise conservative users instead, which is the reverse of what we do today. This will require a tiered rate structure like you sometimes see with water utilities.