Quote:
Originally Posted by WyrTwister
Fun thing about conservation .
Conserve a little , you are golden . Conserve too much & they start raising prices and other ways of ways of poking us with the sharp end of the stick .
God bless
Wyr
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From the viewpoint of conservation, this statement sways me even more in favor of it. If I am saving 20 percent on my bill, they can do whatever they want to try to raise my bill. It just adds to my return on the dollars invested. It has the effect of me perceiving an even higher bill (at least part of the year) that I would have had to pay, had I not done the conservation measure. Let me explain.
Let's say I had a $100 average bill before installing a heat pump to replace the old energy hog. My power bill immediately lowers to $80 a month on average. The power company notices this change, and starts charging me 3 percent extra during the summer. My usage does not change substantially during the winter, so I don't pay a "natural gas" premium. In my eyes, the power utility just sped up their normal rate increases on me, maybe a year. Yes, I did pay an extra 2 dollars this month, but they would have increased their rates past his point in a year or two anyway. The fact that this increase happened early in the first place, to me, is a sign of weakness on the power utility. They are reacting to the pain of an arm twisting. That alone would have justified the conservation measure in my eyes, and would push me towards more aggressive measures to shave even more dollars from my bill.
Sometimes the spreadsheets and balance sheets don't tell the whole story. Events like this are not all about the bottom line capitalism. There are large scale political movements happening behind what is showing up on our power bills. The tycoons on top of these massive public utilities are paying WAY more attention to those of us who conserve than we are to them. In their positions, they HAVE TO make money every quarter OR ELSE. Their livelihoods and careers depend on it. I for one am not trying to keep them rich and powerful forever.