Has this happen to you? Trying to conserve?

Question

A few years back, our power company asked everyone to trun off their lights when not useing them, also to help out on your bills, but after eveyone began cutting back, they raised the rates, saying they weren't making enough money!

Answer 1

No this has not happened to me , but to opt for using green power has cost us higher in rates .

Answer 2

No, that hasnt happened to me, but it raises an interesting point; If governments were more interested in reducing pollution from commercial power generating companies by offering grants for private green energy (solar, wind and water) and less concerned with tax from oil, gas, coal, and nucular power, then we could have green and more importantly, free energy.

Answer 3

no, this has not happend  to me so dfar

Answer 4

People don't want to use less energy.  They just want to pay less for it.  That's a fact of life in today's American society that ALL utilities are experiencing.  The utility raised the rates to send a pricing signal to customers in order to get them to cut back on energy use.    Additionally, utilities in the U.S. are required to meet customer demand 24/7.  When customers place more demand on the system, the utility must meet it by building more power generation.  Until the consumer learns this basic fact, you will continue to see more of the same.  The utility is only responding to the demands being placed upon it by the consumer; which is something totally out of its control.

Just look at all the electronics in homes these days as compared to 20 years ago.  There's no wonder why utilities are being stretched to the max, yet they are being labeled as the bad guy.  

If you're serious about conserving, then don't load your home up with all the fancy electronics, install CFLs, turn off lights when not needed and cut back elsewhere on what YOU use. The consumer has to take responsibility in this effort and NOT just saddle the utility with ALL the blame.

Answer 5

Yes, it has happened to me.

Answer 6

One thing you need to remember while you're griping about industries such as the power companies, is that the COST of the fuel they needed to purchase so they could generate the electricity that they send into the grid has increased globally - so they had to increase the price of the electricity that the consumer pays to cover that cost...  

Here's an example:  A few years ago, many of the electric utilities across the country started burning natural gas in their boilers so their emissions would be reduced.  This caused the available supply of natural gas to decrease - so the price of natural gas increased for everyone...utilities, businesses, residential customers, etc.  So the electric company had to pay more to generate the electricity, so they pass along that price increase to their customers.  

Now, imagine how much your bill would have gone up if you hadn't changed to more efficient lighting or switched off lights when you left a room...

Another example would be the global price of other commodities - such as iron, copper, etc.  

Businesses are paying more for raw materials to manufacture their products.  In order to maintain profitability, they have to increase the price of their product to the consumer so they can stay in business...

Answer 7

you will be saving pennies by turning off lights

@ 10 cents a KWh  or 1000 watt/hr  a 100 watt light bulb would cost 1 penny per hour to run...... but it all adds up........  somebody let me know if my math is wrong...

installing CFL's helps on the power end but with any fluorescent bulb there is a small amount of mercury....do you think every bulb is going to be recycled?

more than likely the power company is losing business to companies shifting the manufacturing base to china....

and now we have the generation that would not turn off the lights/tv (no matter how many times we said it till we were blue in the face)looking down at us because we don't drive a hybrid car....

Answer 8

No, my utility has never asked me to turn off lights or anything, but they do send a little flyer with my bill every month showing me how to conserve energy.  

Acidman hit the nail on the head - the cost of their fuel, whether it be coal, oil, gas, or whatever, is going up, and order to stay in business, they have to raise rates.  

Hey the world uses more energy now than we did 20 or even 10 or 5 years ago, so this requires more power to be generated on the grid.  If more and more people are using electricity, the cost to produce electricity is going to go up as well, it's simple supply and demand.