The Solar Surcharge

Re: The Solar Surcharge

The thing with utilities is that they have a guaranteed bottom line. If they fall short of that because of decreased sales then they apply with the PSC for a rate increase to get the bottom line back up. As a utility customer you are not paying only for infrastructure - you are also paying for executives that pull down 6 figure incomes with bonuses and paid benefits.

Over the last 11 years of off-grid living here, the utility rates have increased by 3.7x what they were in 2002. NOTHING is being maintained or improved. There are poles going thru swamps where the poles are leaning at a 45 degree angle - basically being held up by the wires from the poles on good ground, and they go down when a storm comes thru. Then they prop them back up by pulling the pole up and bolting a brace pole to it. But it's not fixed until it stops working, even though it has obvious problems.

In the last 11 years the electric co-op has built a brand new fancy office building, the executives are all making 150,000+/year incomes, the standby generators that they are required to have being a reseller of Xcel Energy power are sitting with the fuel tanks empty and have not been run or maintained in 9 years. Power regularly goes out to large areas for two weeks at a time during winter ice events or summer storms because of the disrepair condition of the rural lines.

And this is what utility customers have gotten in return for paying 3.7x more for their electricity today than it cost 11 years ago. For us, it hasn't been easy at some points in the last 11 years to keep the power on. But it has never gone out once in those 11 years for more than a few minutes due to a dead battery bank a couple times and inverter low voltage shutdown.

When you live off-grid you sort of lose track of what is going on with this because you basically don't care. I have always told people that living off-grid is more expensive than living on-grid because of things like our battery bank ($9,000). But really, we have come out far on top by not being "hooked up". It would've cost us $168,000 at the time (11 years ago) to get lines run and we have not spent that on equipment here. Our generator fuel bill was $176 for January and $102 for February. That's "bad" - but live as good today as our neighbor 5 miles up the road and he told me the other day that his electric bill was $360 for the month of February and the power went out twice for him there during the month for 5 minutes one time and a half hour another time.

So I an happy with our decision today. Every time we buy a new piece of equipment it's expensive, like our new inverter. But I also sold the old one for what I paid for it, and you tend to not take that into account when you write out the check for the new one because the check is Big. I also tend to look at things the way it was 11 years ago when we made the decision to live off-grid. But when I take into account what has happened in that time for people with utility power, vs what has happened for us not using it - we have come out better than the utility customers. Not only financially, but from a reliability standpoint too, and the fact that we have control over where our power comes from - we own the "power company" here.

When I read this thing about the power company coming up with a new twist to protect their bottom line - charging RE customers for using their grid as a "storage device", that's when I know I want nothing to do with being a utility customer.
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Chris

Re: The Solar Surcharge

Cariboocoot wrote: »

Kind of reminds me of the Amish homes where I used to live: law required residences to have service, so they had service. They didn't use it, but they had it. Paying for nothing. Some of them stopped paying and guess what? The meters were pulled. End of problem. These days it looks like they'd still get charged - or evicted? It's insane.

It's not that way everywhere. There is no law or ordnance here that says you have to be hooked up or have service. There is a large Amish community about 25 miles from us and they have never bothered them there or told them they have to have electric service. The Amish that live there have batteries and solar panels and small wind turbines. Their systems are quite small and Spartan. But they do have electric lights and there is one fellow that has a large system and powers a shop with it where he builds some of the best furniture you can buy anywhere. We had that guy build our kitchen cabinets and they are made of real oak with maple lining and shelves - and we got them for half the price of what quality cabinets like that would've cost from a commercial manufacturer.

But for the most part it is as you say in many parts - insane. But it is nice that distributed generation RE power sources have made enough difference for the utility companies to start complaining about it. That's when the masses and politicians see that it DOES work and that is just MIGHT be a better solution than the house-of-cards system that was set up under government regulation.
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Chris

Re: The Solar Surcharge

Bill - if I understand all that correctly; They're going to charge somebody that goes off-grid because they feel they're "responsible" for some of these things?

How can this hold up in court when there was no contract signed in the first place, saying you're responsible for these things, when the customer hooked up to the utility power? It's a monthly service, for pete's sake, that people pay for. What makes an electric utility different than, say, a cable TV company? So you got cable TV service and you disconnect it to get satellite instead - and the cable TV company can continue to charge you for whatever?

This is pure insanity. No - pure stupidity.
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Chris

Re: The Solar Surcharge

Cariboocoot wrote: »

Unnecessary, illegal, and dangerous.
To say nothing of how stupid it was to post that video. Now the power company will be able to find out who did it, and they will prosecute.

Certainly not anything we'd advocate around here.

LOL! It was one of those movie clip things he got in a iPhone or something and he patched it all together as a joke. I thought it was pretty funny myself
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Chris

Re: The Solar Surcharge

Cariboocoot wrote: »

Yes, but I still have to put up an official disclaimer against what it implies.

There really are people out there who would try it for real.

Yeah, well I'll tell you what - them guys that live up around McDowell Lake up there - that would be minor compared to some of the stuff they do. They got surveillance cameras set up so they can watch to see if the Mounties or Minister of the Woods is coming so they can go hide before he gets there. LOL!

Let me put it this way - all of our Canadian friends that live in Ontario all live off-grid, all their places look like junkyards because any time they find something that they think they might need someday they drag it home. And they're all outlaws because short of using an airplane it takes Law Enforcement 2-3 days to get to where they live. So they make their own laws. But when we go up to visit, gosh, do we ever have a lot of fun!
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Chris

Re: The Solar Surcharge

chevenstein wrote: »

On the destruction issue, I am reminded of a problem that a company I used to work for had building utility projects in the Caribbean: copper thieves would steal wire and equipment almost as fast as it could be installed in some places. It was illegal there too, but as we well know the illegality of an act does not prevent it.

A few years ago they tried to run a power line thru the North Woods here to some town that they figured needed power for "economic development". The people don't give a flyin hoot about "economic development". But they don't like somebody blazing a trail thru the North Woods to put in a power line. People set up on hills from a 1/2 mile away with Barrett .50's and .300 Weatherby Mags and shot insulators off the highline faster than they could strap the wires to 'em.

They gave up on putting in that power line.
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Chris