Reduce your use program

[FlyerInHi]

BG, I believe the utilities are trying to stem the defection to rooftop solar by higher energy users. So they will charge lower users like you to subsidize the high users (that is to make it less economically self evident to install solar)

I think that states may have to regulate utilities and make them non-profit if the big picture goal is to reduce carbon emissions.

There’s a lot of polemic in Neveda where NV Energy (owned by Belkshire Hathaway) is doing the same thing.

Tech improvements such as the Tesla Powerball might cause more people to go off grid. Good time to invest in battery makers?

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]BG, I believe the utilities are trying to stem the defection to rooftop solar by higher energy users. So they will charge lower users like you to subsidize the high users (that is to make it less economically self evident to install solar)

I think that states may have to regulate utilities and make them non-profit if the big picture goal is to reduce carbon emissions.

There’s a lot of polemic in Neveda where NV Energy (owned by Belkshire Hathaway) is doing the same thing.

Tech improvements such as the Tesla Powerball might cause more people to go off grid. Good time to invest in battery makers?[/quote]

Well my highest bill (dead of winter) with my kid here PT was <$89. So I ALWAYS conserved energy, even when I was a 1.5 person household. Seriously, how much energy should each person in a household need to use per month ($40 each ... $50 each?). I realize this equation changes if the household has a pool or AC but that household CHOSE to buy/rent a house in an area where AC was needed and/or one with a pool or CHOSE to install a pool themselves. I have owned home(s) with backyard in pool(s) in the past (none which needed A/C, though) but this is no longer my problem, nor should it be. Moving off the grid actually sounds really great to me, FIH. I'm just wondering about the existence (or more likely, non-existence) of high speed internet in those areas. And experience has taught me that many of those fabulous hideaway homes situated in the bucolic woods "off the grid" need extensive septic/leachfield remediation prior to move-in at a cost of $3800 or more. Assuming the seller refuses to pay for this in escrow, that's enough for me to pay for city sewer for about 9.5 years! It's not always cheaper to be "off the grid" unless one is satisfied to live a very primitive lifestyle.

[FlyerInHi]

I wouldn’t want to be off grid sewer/water wise. Too much of a pain.

But off grid electric wise, with solar and a battery array doesn’t sound bad. Of course, you can still have high speed internet.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]I wouldn’t want to be off grid sewer/water wise. Too much of a pain.

But off grid electric wise, with solar and a battery array doesn’t sound bad. Of course, you can still have high speed internet.[/quote]

Well, believe it or not, several areas up in the Rockies which I considered putting on my retirement short-list (even “upscale” areas), currently have only DSL internet to choose from, which I don’t want after having cable internet in my home since 1999. (I have used DSL service working in older dtn SD bldgs and feel it is not in any way comparable to cable internet svc at all.)

What I like about S. Lake Tahoe is that it is extremely beautiful and has all the amenities and local public services yet a a SLT resident can be in the wilderness in just a few minutes driving.

I just watched the NYT video on the cost of electricity in HI. Although its residents likely don’t run heat (or even have heaters in their homes), homes on the Hawaiian Islands are likely all-electric. This makes the utility bills much higher for the its residents.

We in SD have natural gas available to heat our homes, our inside water and cooktops. Natural gas is the favored utility for at least the 1st two purposes.

[FlyerInHi]

DSL has improved.
Where you can get AT&T U-Verse TV, their version of DSL is pretty fast, but still slower than cable Internet. I wouldn’t let that deter me from a dream home.

For retirement, South Lake Tahoe near the wilderness sounds beautiful and nice but only for 1 month per year for me. I’d rather live in a small apartment in NYC with a view of a brick wall (but with a nicely designed interior, of course). To each his own.

My cousin is retired in Laguna Woods. Just a modest, but nice 2-bedroom condo they remodeled. The husband got the hair-brained idea to buy a house in some boring town in Northern California. He now goes up there alone to take care of it. The wife stays in Laguna Woods where she has a lot of friends and always doing trips and activities of all kinds with them, everyday. The husband is a little weird and loner so has few friends of his own.

[livinincali]

[quote=bearishgurl]
Yeah, I got that e-mail as well. Since my last kid left a year ago, I’ve always been in Tier 1 and my bills have been only $33 to $66 mo for a 4/2/2 SFR. I’m going to get slammed by next spring when there are only two tiers.

So much for being an energy conservationist. I feel the two-tiered system will be very unfair to single-person households with no A/C or pool. We will undoubtedly end up subsidizing energy-hog households and they shouldn’t be my problem …. at all.[/quote]

Actually bigger users have been subsidizing your lower cost for a long time. A lot of energy cost is sunk costs like the infrastructure to deliver it and produce it. The fuel itself is relatively cheap all things considered. Solar with net metering has the same advantage where they win while they’re neighbors pick up the tab. Granted I don’t use a lot of power so I’ll get hit too but I’m not surprised by the change.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=livinincali][quote=bearishgurl]
Yeah, I got that e-mail as well. Since my last kid left a year ago, I’ve always been in Tier 1 and my bills have been only $33 to $66 mo for a 4/2/2 SFR. I’m going to get slammed by next spring when there are only two tiers.

So much for being an energy conservationist. I feel the two-tiered system will be very unfair to single-person households with no A/C or pool. We will undoubtedly end up subsidizing energy-hog households and they shouldn’t be my problem …. at all.[/quote]

Actually bigger users have been subsidizing your lower cost for a long time. A lot of energy cost is sunk costs like the infrastructure to deliver it and produce it. The fuel itself is relatively cheap all things considered. Solar with net metering has the same advantage where they win while they’re neighbors pick up the tab. Granted I don’t use a lot of power so I’ll get hit too but I’m not surprised by the change.[/quote]

I disagree, Livinincali. My neighborhood is over 65 years old and thus, we were “here first.” as were the rest of our “brethren” neighborhoods. Existing unburied overhead lines or no, it is what it is and we are frequently/likely “coastal” in location. We should not have to subsidize the Lizardland inhabitant hshld (more often with A/C as well as backyard pool). IT’S NOT OUR PROBLEM that other ratepayers chose to live in lizardland. Many of us ALREADY PAID OUR DUES IN THIS LIFE and wish to retire with utility bills reflective of OUR OWN USE USAGE ONLY, NOT that of subsidizing a family of five who can’t manage to turn off their lights or TV’s they aren’t using.

In other words, the “infrastructure” was always there for ME. Why should I pay for it over again when my infrastructure was paid off in 1962?? What about YOU? Your choices are YOUR problem …. not mine.

IT’S NOT MY PROBLEM, NOR SHOULD IT BE!!

[bearishgurl]

Oh, and uh, HELLO? EVERYONE has the choice of moving into a “coastal” (read: <=7 miles from the ocean) neighborhood and reaping the benefits of much lower utilities. Will most homebuyers/prospective renters with minor kids attempt this? Uhhh, no. They want a "mcmansion" in lizardland, with all its attendant pest control problems and necessity of A/C a good part of the year. Now the PUC wants to make this group's (wasteful) utility bill more "fair" for them (and successfully did so) on the backs of the more well-established coastal (and, more often than not, thrifty) ratepayers. EXACTLY HOW IS THE PROBLEM THE LIZARDLAND INHABITANTS GOT THEMSELVES INTO THE REST OF SD'S PROBLEM, FOLKS. Uhhh, it isn't. It's a matter of personal choice and the ones who are paying several hundred dollars per month to SDG&E made their choices. The rest of the ratepayors (the more prudent group) should not be penalized for this phenonemnon.

[livinincali]

[quote=bearishgurl]
I disagree, Livinincali. My neighborhood is over 65 years old and thus, we were “here first.” as were the rest of our “brethren” neighborhoods. Existing unburied overhead lines or no, it is what it is and we are frequently/likely “coastal” in location. We should not have to subsidize the Lizardland inhabitant hshld (more often with A/C as well as backyard pool). IT’S NOT OUR PROBLEM that other ratepayers chose to live in lizardland. Many of us ALREADY PAID OUR DUES IN THIS LIFE and wish to retire with utility bills reflective of OUR OWN USE USAGE ONLY, NOT that of subsidizing a family of five who can’t manage to turn off their lights or TV’s they aren’t using.

In other words, the “infrastructure” was always there for ME. Why should I pay for it over again when my infrastructure was paid off in 1962?? What about YOU? Your choices are YOUR problem …. not mine.

IT’S NOT MY PROBLEM, NOR SHOULD IT BE!![/quote]

So you mean when Chula Vista blew up the 1950’s era fuel oil power plant a couple years ago you shouldn’t have to pay for the replacement power plant to provide you power (you paid for that plant but now it’s gone and has to be replaced because it doesn’t last forever). Maybe you should get no power since you aren’t contributing to the new power plants that need to be built to replace the old power plants that were inefficient and at the end of life. How do they replace the power generated by San Onofre which was a lower cost nuclear power plant?. With more expansive Solar farms and other renewables but you shouldn’t have to pay for that either. LOL.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/03/local/la-me-0203-power-plant-20130203

[bearishgurl]

[quote=livinincali][quote=bearishgurl]
I disagree, Livinincali. My neighborhood is over 65 years old and thus, we were “here first.” as were the rest of our “brethren” neighborhoods. Existing unburied overhead lines or no, it is what it is and we are frequently/likely “coastal” in location. We should not have to subsidize the Lizardland inhabitant hshld (more often with A/C as well as backyard pool). IT’S NOT OUR PROBLEM that other ratepayers chose to live in lizardland. Many of us ALREADY PAID OUR DUES IN THIS LIFE and wish to retire with utility bills reflective of OUR OWN USE USAGE ONLY, NOT that of subsidizing a family of five who can’t manage to turn off their lights or TV’s they aren’t using.

In other words, the “infrastructure” was always there for ME. Why should I pay for it over again when my infrastructure was paid off in 1962?? What about YOU? Your choices are YOUR problem …. not mine.

IT’S NOT MY PROBLEM, NOR SHOULD IT BE!![/quote]

So you mean when Chula Vista blew up the 1950’s era fuel oil power plant a couple years ago you shouldn’t have to pay for the replacement power plant to provide you power (you paid for that plant but now it’s gone and has to be replaced because it doesn’t last forever). Maybe you should get no power since you aren’t contributing to the new power plants that need to be built to replace the old power plants that were inefficient and at the end of life. How do they replace the power generated by San Onofre which was a lower cost nuclear power plant?. With more expansive Solar farms and other renewables but you shouldn’t have to pay for that either. LOL.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/03/local/la-me-0203-power-plant-20130203%5B/quote%5D

Well, we’ve had numerous power outages over the years (all 4-12 hours long). Most notably, last week, on the 8-9th (8 hrs) and 10-11th (6 hrs). They happen on the hottest, muggiest days, the above days being 97 and 94 degrees, respectively. The exact same transformer blows up every time (I can hear the crackling popgun sound sitting at my desk) and on the 8th, a power line went down in the same vicinity, sending out a popping explosion. (Fortunately, it missed hitting motorists.) Invariably, all the stoplights go out on the main drag for a mile-plus, causing sirens for the next hour. It’s extremely annoying and I’m finding myself now needing to buy a heavy, battery backup surge protector, even though I already have two surge protectors. I almost lost a portable SATA drive on the 10th (with all my business files and cases on it) but fortunately was able to resurrect it on another computer. I’ve already lost two routers in past years and am currently on my 4th router and 3rd modem in 14 years (due to them getting “fried” in power outages), with only one router actually purchased as an “upgrade” upon receiving a letter from Cox to do so.

How would YOU like to sleep on a sheet on the floor in front of your front door (security screen) in one of the muggiest nights in history, whilst listening to all your neighbor’s generators running? My poor pets!

Yeah, the folks around here ALL KNOW THE DRILL …. very well. Like many (most?) coastal areas, we don’t have buried cable and we’ll all likely be dead before SDG&E gets around to their undergrounding schedule around here.

Why should we pay higher rates so those “super-users” in buried-cable lizardland can be “comfortable” under their central A/C? What exactly is it that I’ll be getting for my money if my utility bill happens to double under a two-tiered rate system (to make it more “fair” for super-users, lol)?

[bearishgurl]

Let us take into account that a larger household size than one person creates an “economy of scale” of sorts (i.e. 3 people in a hshld watching TV together or 2 kids sleeping in the same room, etc).

Speaking of “super-users,” I want to know how much energy (gas & elec) each person in a household SHOULD use. In other words, if I can run a 4/2 2200 sf one-person hshld on $35 to $50 mo in the warm months (gas + elec svc in a near-coastal location), would it be safe to say that $35 – $50 PER PERSON is a fair amount of utilities to use in a hshld of MORE than one person (even if they use A/C periodically or have a pool)?

Would $250 be a fair bill for a 5-person hshld? Coastal or inland? Pool or not? What is the REAL reason people complain about $400+ monthly gas/elec bills in SD? If they don’t have a household of 8+ people, WHY are they using so much energy??

I don’t have a pool or A/C but use power tools for several hrs per month, run an electric lawnmower twice per month and have a sprinkler system.

[livinincali]

[quote=bearishgurl]
Why should we pay higher rates so those “super-users” in buried-cable lizardland can be “comfortable” under their central A/C? What exactly is it that I’ll be getting for my money if my utility bill happens to double under a two-tiered rate system (to make it more “fair” for super-users, lol)?[/quote]

Their bills will continue to be much higher than yours. A lot of people will see their bill go up somewhat a few people will see their bill go down significantly. If your neighbor uses twice as much power as you does he deserved to be billed 4 times as much when he’s in your same shoes when it comes to infrastructure. Go look at this document where you can see that rates for tier 3 and 4 are more than double 1 and 2. The future proposal shrinks that down to about 25% and there still is a heavy penalty for super users.

https://www.sdge.com/sites/default/files/documents/1725340387/FINAL_S1410090_RateVision_BillInsert.pdf?nid=13806

Let’s just be honest with ourselves that low energy users were getting a pretty good deal. I haven’t really seen my bill go up much at all in the past 7 years using tier 2 or below power 99% of the time.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=livinincali][quote=bearishgurl]
Why should we pay higher rates so those “super-users” in buried-cable lizardland can be “comfortable” under their central A/C? What exactly is it that I’ll be getting for my money if my utility bill happens to double under a two-tiered rate system (to make it more “fair” for super-users, lol)?[/quote]

Their bills will continue to be much higher than yours. A lot of people will see their bill go up somewhat a few people will see their bill go down significantly. If your neighbor uses twice as much power as you does he deserved to be billed 4 times as much when he’s in your same shoes when it comes to infrastructure. Go look at this document where you can see that rates for tier 3 and 4 are more than double 1 and 2. The future proposal shrinks that down to about 25% and there still is a heavy penalty for super users.

https://www.sdge.com/sites/default/files/documents/1725340387/FINAL_S1410090_RateVision_BillInsert.pdf?nid=13806

Let’s just be honest with ourselves that low energy users were getting a pretty good deal. I haven’t really seen my bill go up much at all in the past 7 years using tier 2 or below power 99% of the time.[/quote]

I downloaded the recent SDG&E bill insert, livinincali. I don’t get paper bills so I haven’t seen this yet. I’ll take a closer look at it later tonight. Thanks for the link.

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