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Jul - General Chat - Stupid power companies New poll - New thread - New reply
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Rena
I had one (1) message in Discord deleted and proceeded to make a huge, huge mess about how it was a violation of free speech and how moderators are supposed to be spam janitors and nobody should have the right to tell me not to talk about school shootings
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Posted on 05-05-10 03:20:33 PM Link | Quote
05-05-10 10:20:33 AM
Post #3190
Even though the math adds up, I still think seventy dollars in fees to bring me fifteen dollars worth of electricity is a little ridiculous. Maybe I'd be better off buying a big solar panel or powering everything off propane.

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Xkeeper

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Posted on 05-05-10 03:21:04 PM Link | Quote
Move here, where you're all but required to use air conditioning and it runs you over $300 a month!

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Rena
I had one (1) message in Discord deleted and proceeded to make a huge, huge mess about how it was a violation of free speech and how moderators are supposed to be spam janitors and nobody should have the right to tell me not to talk about school shootings
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Posted on 05-05-10 03:22:05 PM Link | Quote
05-05-10 10:22:05 AM
Post #3191
No thanks. I'm just lucky I don't have to pay for gas here, as it's the same situation with heat. Out of the frying pan and into the freezer!

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Orlandu


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Posted on 05-05-10 03:25:48 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by Xkeeper
Move here, where you're all but required to use air conditioning and it runs you over $300 a month!


And thats just for a 1 bedroom apartment!

Seriously though, its ridiculously high over here. Add a pool on to the A/C bill??? Its expensive to just stay cool, but thats what you get for living in a desert.

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Liliana
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Posted on 05-05-10 03:27:54 PM Link | Quote
Antarctica does have certain advantages.

And energy fees are also insanely high here because of a monopoly. Woo!

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Rena
I had one (1) message in Discord deleted and proceeded to make a huge, huge mess about how it was a violation of free speech and how moderators are supposed to be spam janitors and nobody should have the right to tell me not to talk about school shootings
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Posted on 05-05-10 03:29:26 PM Link | Quote
05-05-10 10:29:26 AM
Post #3192
It's a monopoly just about everywhere. Not like I can call up some other company and have them run another set of power lines to my apartment. (Yeah just run 'em through the window! ) Then they'd probably be just as bad.

Oh BTW guys, maybe you can take the profits from those huge fees and use them to hire English-speaking customer support reps with phones that work. I called two companies to ask about the fees and both were almost completely impossible to understand between a thick accent and a quiet phone that crackles and pops and buzzes in my ear every few seconds. (Meanwhile the recorded menus sound just fine, except that the speakers sound horribly tired and depressed...)

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Orlandu


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Posted on 05-05-10 03:31:31 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by HyperHacker
Oh BTW guys, maybe you can take the profits from those huge fees and use them to hire English-speaking customer support reps with phones that work. I called two companies to ask about the fees and both were almost completely impossible to understand between a thick accent and a quiet phone that crackles and pops and buzzes in my ear every few seconds. (Meanwhile the recorded menus sound just fine, except that the speakers sound horribly tired and depressed...)


But if they fixed those 2 issues, they would have to tack on 4 extra fees... 1 for "English for Dummies" books, 1 for modern phones, 1 for volume adjusters on those phones, and 1 for competence.

What are those fees for anyway, what do they list as?

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Hiryuu

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Posted on 05-05-10 03:35:00 PM Link | Quote
I'm anywhere between 75 and 200 dollars a month for electricity, water, sewer depending on the month.

June, July and August will suck, in that regard.
Rena
I had one (1) message in Discord deleted and proceeded to make a huge, huge mess about how it was a violation of free speech and how moderators are supposed to be spam janitors and nobody should have the right to tell me not to talk about school shootings
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Posted on 05-05-10 03:42:15 PM Link | Quote
05-05-10 10:42:15 AM
Post #3193
Administration Fee$10.61
Cost of Electricity$15.21
GST$1.29
Transmission Charge$4.02
Distribution Charge$49.45
Rate Riders$3.56CR
Local Access Fee$5.02
GST$2.75
Total$84.79

Basically there's one section for the fees from the actual power company in the city and then one for the local company that owns the lines in town, which means I get to pay taxes on both. I don't even know what the hell most of these charges are supposed to be; all they could tell me was how they're calculated.

My actual usage is actually quite a bit less than last month, but apparently a few different fees went up all at once, and they don't seem to bill at regular intervals (this bill actually covers 5 weeks rather than 4, which adds about $7 worth of per-day fees), so the total cost ends up being about $25 more. Isn't that great.

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Taryn

Passed away.

Thanks for being a part of us, even if it wasn't always on the best of terms.

1987-2014


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Posted on 05-05-10 04:25:35 PM Link | Quote
My bills at my old apartment were usually only around $35/month, but if I ran the AC they could approach $100.

Of course, it was only 2 rooms, plus a kitchen and bathroom

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Shadic
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Posted on 05-05-10 04:26:26 PM Link | Quote
Bitmap
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Banned for being a dick on the board, in private messages, and then taking that dick-ness off the board and harassing members elsewhere for it. Time to go!

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Since: 04-19-09

From: Cataula Georgia

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Posted on 05-05-10 09:57:04 PM Link | Quote

I pay 0$

Solar powered. Plus a three day battery that powers on it's own in a 8 hour charge period. :smugdra:

Fuck the electric company.

And the water company. We have our own well. What bitches :smugdra:

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Xkeeper

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Posted on 05-05-10 10:20:06 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by Bitmap
I pay 0$

Solar powered. Plus a three day battery that powers on it's own in a 8 hour charge period. :smugdra:

Nobody seems to listen when I tell them that solar power really is the next big thing for residential power.

It's sad that more research/development isn't being put towards putting this in every new home. Expensive up front? Yes. Lowers our reliance on power companies, power plants, and other things? Yes.

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Taryn

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Posted on 05-05-10 10:27:18 PM Link | Quote
I thought of something a while back. Why not have solar cells on the roofs of houses and other buildings? As Xkeeper said, it would be expensive to begin with, but it'd use up almost no space relative to having huge solar farms. Of course, it wouldn't work all year in very snowy places like Michigan, but even reducing fossil fuel dependence is a great thing to do. Other power sources could serve as backups.

I get rather annoyed when people say windmills are ugly and try to use that to block their construction. I'd say a coal-belching power plant is much uglier than a bunch of windmills.

And yes, I agree that solar is the energy source of the future. The sun produces so much energy and will shine for billions of years to come. How long do you think those dead buried decomposed organisms we call fossil fuels will last?

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Posted on 05-06-10 02:55:06 AM Link | Quote
The problem is that yes, it IS expensive up front but also that in some places, the payback period on the solar panels it not nearly soon enough to warrant using them. It all depends on the electricity usage and storage of the owner of the panel. Not to mention that to run the house entirely on solar requires a large solar array of high-efficiency solar panels otherwise you're only getting part of your power from the cells and the rest from the power plants. And higher efficiency panels means higher $ to spend.

It's a technology that really needs to be developed more but unfortunately, the lobbies in congress against alternative energy tend to be the biggest lobbies of all. :|

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Orlandu


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Posted on 05-06-10 03:22:06 AM (last edited by Orlandu at 05-06-10 12:22 AM) Link | Quote
With solar powered water heaters, they say its best to tack the up front cost on your mortgage and then it will pay itself off over time. Unfortunately, it can take up to 5+ years for it to pay off with the savings on gas or electricity. The same can be done for solar power, but if you don't live in an eco friendly house then you aren't maximizing its potential.

I've heard of homes in Montana and other rural settings that were built with minimum power consumption in mind and use several types of renewable energy. They actually receive checks from the power company because they are connected to the grid but don't use it, but the power company will draw from their stored energy and pay them for it. But the houses are designed to run on less than 1/10th of the power a typical house uses.

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Rachel Mae

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Posted on 05-06-10 04:01:30 AM Link | Quote
Originally posted by FirePhoenix
Not to mention that to run the house entirely on solar requires a large solar array of high-efficiency solar panels otherwise you're only getting part of your power from the cells and the rest from the power plants.
Getting part of your power from a plant is better than all of it, no?

I think one of the biggest hurdles facing new energy technologies is this pervasive "all or nothing" attitude: either all of your energy comes from [new technology], right now, or it's not worth using. Stop and think about how much oil the US consumes: somewhere around 20,680,000 (twenty million!) barrels every day. If we only converted 1/4 of that to solar/wind/water/etc., we'd be saving 5,170,000 barrels, slightly more than what the entire nation of Japan uses daily.

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Rena
I had one (1) message in Discord deleted and proceeded to make a huge, huge mess about how it was a violation of free speech and how moderators are supposed to be spam janitors and nobody should have the right to tell me not to talk about school shootings
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Posted on 05-06-10 02:51:11 PM Link | Quote
05-06-10 09:51:11 AM
Post #3200
Yeah, it'd definitely be helpful to switch to alternative sources gradually. Maybe people just aren't interested because they're already using next to nothing as it is and reducing that tiny amount even more won't stop the outrageous fees from the power company?

Seriously though, it's long baffled me why solar continues to be so inefficient to this day. People should be researching the hell out of it. It should be near perfect by now. Hell, we're surrounded by examples (i.e. trees) and it has many advantages (clean independent self-contained system taking up very little space and having virtually no operating expense), you'd think it'd be popular by now.

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Xkeeper

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Posted on 05-06-10 02:53:50 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by HyperHacker
Yeah, it'd definitely be helpful to switch to alternative sources gradually. Maybe people just aren't interested because they're already using next to nothing as it is and reducing that tiny amount even more won't stop the outrageous fees from the power company?

Seriously though, it's long baffled me why solar continues to be so inefficient to this day. People should be researching the hell out of it. It should be near perfect by now. Hell, we're surrounded by examples (i.e. trees) and it has many advantages (clean independent self-contained system taking up very little space and having virtually no operating expense), you'd think it'd be popular by now.

Why would you put money towards researching something that will kill your business? See: big oil, coal mines, etc.

Solar = decreased dependence on coal/oil and more energy. From there it just gets even more obvious.

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Rena
I had one (1) message in Discord deleted and proceeded to make a huge, huge mess about how it was a violation of free speech and how moderators are supposed to be spam janitors and nobody should have the right to tell me not to talk about school shootings
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Posted on 05-06-10 02:58:49 PM Link | Quote
05-06-10 09:58:49 AM
Post #3201
I really thought that was obvious enough not to mention. Of course, oil companies aren't the only ones capable of doing said research.

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Jul - General Chat - Stupid power companies New poll - New thread - New reply


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