Quote:
Originally Posted by Kefir King
No it isn't you...Con Ed charges the most of any electric company in the U.S. Just today I was on a Pennsylvania board of citi-data and they were compaling about $.11 electicity when ours is $.29.
That's almost 3 times as much for a measly 100 miles.
Criminal price gouging.
So we can stop beating ourselves up for careless usage...the deck is stacked against us. Get more efficient and they'll raise the price another 25%.
New York City is probably the most energy efficient city in the United States and this is our reward.
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as a resident of both nyc and pa there is a big difference between the two.
we had a freeze on electric rates in pa by pennsylvania power and light and it expired about a year or so ago. we jumped 30% in one year.
in fact ppl let you start sending in extra payments with your bills each month to try to bank some extra money so you have a credit with ppl. for when the rates jumped.
looking at my bill from ppl we are at .15 cents which by nyc standards is cheap but by pa standards and incomes its an awful lot. we jumped from paying .11 cents to .15 cents overnight.
the real shame of it is we produce our own dirt cheap hydroelectric power at the dam on lake wallenpaupack in our own town and these are the outragious rates we pay. one town over they got talked into putting in a wind mill farm . they have to now tolerate the constant noise , the strobe effect over the town and the bug patterns changed creating havoc with local crops and they never got the cheap electric they were promised.
the higher rates here in the city are at least a little understandable. nyc requires a huge amount of excess capacity built in to the system for our day time needs but that need for power drops off at night with lots of expensive equipment earning very little. con ed tries to sell some of that excess power at night but having seen them do it its more like the stock market with you make money some days and loose on others.
the amount of generation and transmission ability we need to have to support the factories and our huge buildings is enormous. dont forget all con eds feeders, generation equipment ,transformers etc all have to be able to be sized to handle the biggest loads in the summer while at night our usage goes down very low when buildings just about go dark and industry stops and they dont get paid for having all that capacity. they have to have higher rates to cover that un-billed down time.
many areas of the country with heavy manufacturing operate 24/7 and so the utilities are compensated. here in nyc most of our usage is commercial office space,residential and stores which does not go 24/7 . most of that is lighting and hvac.
if you ever noticed many commercial places have a con ed demand meter. thats a meter they install to measure your peak usage.
if everyone comes back from their 10am break and flips there machines on at once con ed has to always have the ability to provide that power surge even if the rest of the day you dont hit that peak again and so they hit you with a penalty charge based on peak and the fact they have those generators turning ready to provide that level of power whether you use it again or not that day. .
one of the products i sell for a living are energy mgmt systems that stagger these loads from all coming on at once so you avoid these peaks and the demand charges that go with them.
i used to get a real hard time from con ed about installing these on their lines .they really didnt want you avoiding these charges since they already have the equipment in place and turning and they want to be compensated whether your using that level of power all day or not.
in our area of pa we have no factories, no huge buildings , none of that usage, nor that level of excess capacity needed and so the rates are out of proportion. about the only huge expense we have is line maintaince as with exposed over head lines and our storms there are big service crews maintained and lots of overtime but again other areas are at .11 cents and they have that issue as well..
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