Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
the network of wires , transformers , transmission lines , substations ,etc is the most expensive part of any electrical generation system , both to build , upgrade and maintain .
think of cable tv where you pay for having 120 channels even though you may hardly watch tv or watch 3 or 4 channels at most . you pay for the cost of the system and the network of cabling and equipment , whether you use it a lot or a little . it is there regardless for you sitting and waiting with millions invested to bring those channels to your home whether you are even home to watch tv . .
if we all paid only for the time we watched tv or the 1 or 2 channels we may watch every cable company would be out of business .
power generation is the cheapest part . the lines , maintenance , transformers and infrastructure is the costliest part .
you may use very little power but the capacity has to be in place to provide you with as much power as you may ever use whether you use it or not .
power costs are always less then the network charges in almost all areas .
in fact at different times of the day we may be selling our power and buying cheaper power elsewhere . the cheapest place to get power is Niagara falls . any excess power they have is sold off . we may buy that power and sell ours to another utility who has higher costs to generate their own .
excess power capacity is sold , the generation side always gets compensated for those generators turning but excess system distribution capacity sits idle and makes no money if under utilized and the mere fact it is their if needed makes it costly so it costs more then the generation side . .
your bill is correct . .
commercial and industrial locations have special demand meters that charge them for the fact that the utility has to have capacity 24/7 to provide them with excess power at times in place even though most of the day they do not draw that much . all wires , transformers and sub stations have to be sized for those few peaks .
think of a factory where they go out on a coffee break at 10am , come back and all the machines start up at once .
the power demands on the system are huge and they have everything sized to give you that extra power , yet after the break the rest of the day power demands are low . they would get no compensation for having all that capacity in place , just in case you need it if it wasn't for a separate demand meter . the meter acts to catch your peaks and boosts your charges for that delivery ability accordingly since everything had to be sized to bring you that power even though at times you don't use it ..
you don't have a demand meter but you do pay the costs for having a system with the capacity to provide all that extra power at times should you want it .
that has nothing to do with the power generation side which is charged by usage to someone 24/7 and fully compensated because we sell excess power to the grid for use by other utility's ..
see , this is an example of how we only know what we know but never know the things we don't know that make our thinking wrong .
Last edited by mathjak107; 04-13-2016 at 04:59 PM..
there is a very important life lesson here i want to mention .
that is the fact that one of the most hurtful things we do to ourselves is we trust our own brains to know all and make informed rational decisions when we make decisions about things or draw opinions about them and the fact is most of the time our brains do not hand us the right information so we run on myth or mis-information . our brains can only consider what we know and include nothing about what we don't know .
you see it here in these forums all the time , especially the investing or economic forums where folks spew skewed misinformation all the time .
they parrot what they hear other mis informed folks say and make those misinformed views their own .
so the point i want to make is humans usually hurt themselves financially or intellectually because we tend not to sleep with enemy .
we only hang out with those who support our views and high five each other , we only read or have interest in those who support our views and we never go in to the enemy's camp to learn their side well enough to have a valid opinion or choice .
i always say when you you can switch hats on something and argue both sides just as effectively it is only then that you have enough of an understanding to have an opinion .
there is a whole other side here from the utility's perspective , and i hate paying these high utility costs myself but the fact is there is a good reason why power generation is much cheaper then the cost of the distribution network that gets that power to your home .
especially because nyc has an under ground delivery system protected from the elements and car crashes that hit utility poles unlike long island who has power outages somewhere every time the wind blows or it storms . an under ground system cost a fortune and maintenance is high because the salt from the roads eats the wires and transmission equipment under ground .
i got to see the power trading room in action one day . it looked like wall street . all kinds of traders on computers buying and selling power all over the country .
every time generated power had a lull it was sold off to another utility somewhere , there was 100% usage of every moment those generators were turning whether we were using all that power generated ourselves or not .
you can not imagine what generated power would cost if those generators had to turn 24/7 and there was a lull in usage and they were not compensated 24/7 for producing that power and selling it off or able to buy power at cheaper costs then we can produce it .
Last edited by mathjak107; 04-14-2016 at 04:00 AM..
Unless you can drive up to Indian Point and stuff electricity into your trunk, or stick photo-voltaics on your roof, you will pay Con Ed dearly for the privilege of using their wires.
Mathjak107 you're making some fascinating points -- I never heard about the selling/trading of power, but it makes total sense and I'm glad someone else set it up. I'm striving daily to lower the amount of electricity I use, but I"m very grateful for having it, and the many ways it makes my life much easier than my grandmother's life was.
Mathjak107 you're making some fascinating points -- I never heard about the selling/trading of power, but it makes total sense and I'm glad someone else set it up. I'm striving daily to lower the amount of electricity I use, but I"m very grateful for having it, and the many ways it makes my life much easier than my grandmother's life was.
How old are you that your grandmother didn't have electricity?
Mathjak107 you're making some fascinating points -- I never heard about the selling/trading of power, but it makes total sense and I'm glad someone else set it up. I'm striving daily to lower the amount of electricity I use, but I"m very grateful for having it, and the many ways it makes my life much easier than my grandmother's life was.
yep , it is wild how switches are thrown and power goes from utility to utility over a big grid as demand falls off in one area and another area can buy it cheaper then produce their own . .
Mathjak107 you're making some fascinating points -- I never heard about the selling/trading of power, but it makes total sense and I'm glad someone else set it up. I'm striving daily to lower the amount of electricity I use, but I"m very grateful for having it, and the many ways it makes my life much easier than my grandmother's life was.
we all would like to have the ability of having things like cable , internet and water ,gas and electricity at the snap of our finger . but we don't realize that they have to have the capacity to serve us if and when we want it and if it wasn't for these charges they would not be compensated for the distribution network if it wasn't being maxed out .
i used to sell commercial energy management systems and in the beginning the utility's gave us a hard time . they did not want industrial' s saving a dime since they already built in all that capacity .
it only became important to them when they started to bump the limits of the system . then to expand the capacity would have been horribly expensive so then they wanted you to fit back in to range and save electricity and peak usage .
now they offered all kinds of energy saving bonus's for doing certain things to save power .
i made a career out of those things , selling variable frequency drive panels , power factor correction capacitors and energy management systems .
Last edited by mathjak107; 04-14-2016 at 07:24 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
