I live in Southern California, and as some people might have heard we are in somewhat of an energy crisis. Natural gas and electricity prices have skyrocketed, and the only way to help the problem in the short term is to conserve energy. The recent price increase hit industry extra heavy, and will drive out manufacturers if we don’t get it under control. So we cut our usage to free up some supply, right?
I bought compact fluorescents, a few at a time over the last few months, and that coupled with turning the thermostat down a notch or two and shutting stuff off when I am not using it has cut my electric bill in half compared to last year. I am thinking “hey, this isn’t too bad. If most everyone does it we will be golden!”
The first 80 degree day we have I hear both of my neighbors air conditioners running, and they are leaving their outdoor lighting on all night! WTF? Did they miss the news? Its only 80! Open a @#%@^ window you morons, and shut off your damn lights when no one is out there. It is not a hardship. All we can do to fight the people profiting from this stupid situation is to conserve, and you are too @&^%* stupid to even do that! Do I need to go over there and show you how to work the switches and thermostats? Arggggggggg! Morons. The world is full of morons. If it isn’t ignorance driving them, then it is willful participation in the rape of all Californians, and that is worse. Assholes. I don’t ask much, really, but if you are not using something, shut it off!
I usually have only one light on at a time. I don’t have air conditioning. For years I’ve showered in the dark (I know where everything is). I don’t even have an electric clock. I use gas to boil my water for my morning coffee. My living room light is a 2-foot flourescent tube. I think I’ve conserved quite enough over the years.
But I don’t think it’s a matter of there not being enough power. I think the problem is the greed of the power companies, both inside and outside of California. Southern California Edison can afford to buy and re-make a stadium, but they can’t reduce rates? If California power companies (specifically, Edison and PG&E) are so mismanaged that they can’t provide service without a 40% rate increase, then Wilson should declare “imminent domain” and have the state take over the operation of the power system in California.
Allowing the 40% increase is a cowardly act by the state. The message is: “If we create an artificial power shortage, we can raise the rates; then we can release the power and add to our fortunes.” The state is aiding and abetting the power company robber-barons by allowing them to raise rates. The state should have seized the power companies’ assets for the good of the public. THAT’S how you deal with bullies!
Having said all that, my electricity comes from the Department of Water and Power, so am not subject to rolling blackouts or the 40% rate increase…
Keeping outdoor lights on at night is one of the cheapeast and most effective forms of security. Burglers arn’t too keen on breaking into houses while they are well illuminated and visible from the street.
And some people cannot tolerate hotter weather. You and I may be born and bred warm weather Californians, but in many places, people start dyeing when things heat up. The elderly are especially at risk. It always struck me as strange that fatealities start going up in San Francisco once it reaches tempuratures that a Sacramenan wouls see as “barely warm”. Other unfortunate souls simply can’t sleep when it is hot. Maybe their doing arobics or something. You never know. Perhaps you ought to give them the benefit of the doubt. With the new rate increase, they’ll pay for it anyway.
Stupid energy crisis. My cold blooded mom is already living without heating her home, and now she has to give up her one luxery- warm baths. I’m glad I’m not going to be around to experience the well-over-100 Sacramento summer without AC.
I’ll bet a lot of the newer housing developments in CA (hell, everywhere) have convenants and community rules that outlaw things like, say, solar panels on your house. Or a little wind turbine in your backyard. Or, even simpler, something as gasp unsightly as a clothesline! I know conserving energy via not running our clothes dryer is not an option in OUR neighborhood. Heaven forfend any of our neighbors should have to gaze upon hubby’s longjohns flapping in the breeze. Screw energy conservation, we’ve got a VIEW to maintain!
I think Don’s point is that people are bitching about how high their electric bills are, but aren’t willing to put up with a little discomfort in an effort to either bring the cost down, or actually HELP the situation. Sure, a lot of people are uncomfortable in the heat. But there’s no reason to have the A/C running ALL DAY when you maybe work a double shift and won’t even be home until 9PM when the temp outside has dropped to 55. People just aren’t stopping to think about how nearly everything they do now requires electricity. On the news they were alerting us to the possiblity of rolling blackouts and urged everyone to conserve, then said “for more information, check our website at…” Oh sure, I’ll just fire up my solar computer. :rolleyes: It’s sort of like when we’re supposedly having a drought, and they ask us to conserve water…then you drive by City Hall in the rain and they have the sprinklers running.
I remember the drought. Californians did indeed conserve water. Then the water company said they had to raise their rates because people were conserving so much water that they weren’t making enough money. (Yes, there were sprinklers going in the rain, but for the most part people conserved.)
So now the power companies are getting a rate increase. After this is over, the rates will not go down. People will have replaced their incandescent bulbs with flourescents. They’ll get used to using less energy. That’s when the power companies will come in and say that people are using so little energy that they have to raise rates again to make up for the loss of revenue.
Yes indeed you have conserved quite a lot it seems. I think that’s great if you want to do it.
I on the other hand must be one of the assholes the title of the thread suggests. I plan on NEVER taking a shower in the dark.
I blast as much air conditioning as possible; to me it’s a quality of life thing. I may not be able to have a yacht but I can sure stay cool in the summer.
Lights - There are at least a few lights on at my house 24/7.
Although I don’t try to waste energy I sure don’t go out of my way/comfort to conserve any.
I do boil water for coffee in my Chemex brewer.
Even that could be another example. I use paper Chemex filters rather than a steel filter in a coffee maker. I know it uses more paper but I am after a higher quality cup of coffee.
Oh, I cannot tell you happy it makes me to live in Alameda. We’re in the bay area between SF and Oakland. We don’t have PG & E, we have Alameda Power and Telecom. Our rates haven’t changed, and they aren’t going to. Unfortunately, because we share the state power grid we still have to take our share of the rolling outages.
My roommate and I are being more careful about leaving lights on, and I’ve started doing my laundry later at night, but beyond that, there really isn’t a place where we can cut back more.
I think that the big energy hogs aren’t going to cut back until we lose the power for several days straight in the summer. A piece of me is hoping we’ll get a big heat wave and they have to shut off power to residential areas for a while. Some continued deprivation will wake them up.
I live in Washington, a state that sells California it’s surplus electricity.
We too are suffering from higher prices in our energy bills due to the supposed “increase in demand for electricity”.
We get a little note with each monthly bill explaining how our electric and natural gas company, Avista Utilities, isn’t making any money on this price raise, but rather are only passing along the increased purchase price of natural gas on the market.
They do give a few tips for saving energy here that might help. Turning off a few lights doesn’t save near as much energy as you might think by itself, and there are a few other little things that can be tried.
Slight hi-jack, a company named Kaiser Aluminum that has a few plants here in Washington has had a large labor dispute over the last few years between the company and the workers unions. After several years of negotiating, the labor dispute was finally coming to a resolution, when this energy “crisis” hit.
Thinking quickly, the company laid off hundreds of workers and closed an entire plant.
They are now selling the energy that they buy wholesale from the BPA (Bonneville Power Admin), a branch of the DoE, to the state of Washington at the exhorbitant market value.
Gotta love a government that allows a company to purchase energy from it at discounted prices, so that said company can sell it right back for a profit eh?
Engineer Don, your neighbors might change their tune when they get their power bill next month. There is a large house across the street which, for the last few months, seemed excessively well-lit. I mean, light pouring from every window, every night. Tonight, my dad and I noticed that they seemed to have only one light on, and wondered how many $500 PG&E bills they got before they decided to cut back a little.
Speaking of blackouts, anyone have an idea of how I have managed to avoid them completely? Supposedly they rotate through all the blocks, but my place of work has been blacked out twice (I was not there either time) and my house has yet to be blacked out. Did they skip over Block 11 or something? I don’t get it.
Sorry, I can’t have any sympathy for Cali. You people invented the acro NIMBY. “Yep, I want my Cali lifestyle but damned if I will put up with a power plant in my neck of the woods”
You reap what you sow. I don’t see any other state having a power problem. Maybe you all should look in the fucking mirror.
That’s a very sweeping and judgmental comment, klaatu. Do you think all Californians are like that? No, we’re not. And it has a lot more to do with politics than it does with whiney people not wanting a power plant in their back yard.
I work for a publishing firm that exclusively covers the utilities industry. Boy, have we been having fun watching California fall into the sea. Recent marketing pieces I’ve sent out:
A) A gravesite with ‘California’ on the headstone.
B) A train bearing down on a tied up victim with ‘California Consumers’ scrawled across him.
C) Hi Opal!
BUT seriously folks. California got itself into this mess with it’s effective (though not actual) moratorium on plant building within it’s bounds. Sure, it was easy 10 years ago to say “We don’t need the extra plants. Even if demand grows we can just buy power from the rest of the country.” but if you don’t account for the rising demands for power from the rest of the country you’re screwed. The California PUC made reasonable plans for dealing with electricity deregulation but had them altered by the California legislature in ways that were not…‘market savvy’ I guess you have to say. Supply was restricted while no effort was made to bring demand into line with the new supply chain.
In short, you can’t control the price level the utilities can hit consumers with while not controlling the price level at which the utilities are forced to pay power providers. Which is what the government of California did to PG&E and SoCalEd.
I’m not trying to cry a river here for the utilities, understand me, but I am saying that I know who’s ultimately responsible for the system that produced this result. If you think it’s just a simple matter of profiteering by the utilities you’re not looking deep enough.
And don’t get me started on the California governments plan to take ownership of the transmission grid as compensation for bailing out the utilities.
<Snidely Whiplash voice>
Hello PG&E. How are you this fine day…
I’ve set up this system that’s going to make you go bankrupt quickly! Then, when you’re in dire financial straits, I’ll bail you out and seize your most valuable hard asset!
I agree. California has one of the LOWEST per-capita electricity usage rates in the country. It’s just that our population is increasing faster than we can cope with. And don’t tell us “tough sh**, deal with it”. The population growth is ENTIRELY due to immigration and immigrants’ recently arrived babies. At the risk of venturing into political incorrectness, I’ve seen pictures of RECENTLY arrived immigrants, living in cheap hotels downtown, and they actually have 32-inch TV’s and VCR’s already in place, going full blast. To be fair about it, if I lived in a place like that I’d probably do the same. But don’t tell us
we brought this on ourselves. We have no control over immigration because that’s a Federal matter. Which makes the federal government all the more derelict in its duty when it refuses to intervene on behalf of the consumers.
IIRC, greed of the power companies has nothing to do with the current situation. It is the poorly planned deregulation that is the cause of the problems. The state told the companies that rates had to stay at a certain low level. That wasn’t a problem until the cost of oil and gas started to move continually and steadily upwards. Electricity producers suddenly have higher costs and pass that cost onto the utilities. However the utilities are (were) prohibited from charging more than X$ per unit. The result is that the utilities have incured billions of dollars of debt. Hell, the California government didn’t even allow them to fire people in order to lower costs. The government of California screwed this up big time.
There’s a guy on morning radio up here in Washington whose take on the situation is pretty much “Screw conservation! I leave all my lights on, all my TVs going, and sometimes just for fun I stand in the driveway and run my garage doors up and down over and over again, but mostly I leave them open so I can heat and/or cool the entire neighborhood.” He usually goes on to express his opinions that: individual conservation doesn’t make any difference; “if I can afford it I’m damn well going to use as much as I want;” and that only by forcing a worse crisis than the one we’re in now (by following his examples, I suppose) will anything ever get done.
I can top anybody’s ‘stupid neighbor’ story. My suitemates never turn a light off in their life, as far as I can tell. They rarely turn off the TV when they’re done watching. On several occasions, even in the heart of the crisis, I woke up and went outside and the TV was on - they had left it on all night! Three people in my suite can’t turn their radios off when they leave the room. Also, in the computer lab, people can’t be bothered to actually turn the computers off when they leave. Argh!!! Of course, they’re not paying, the college is. But has it ever occured to them that when the college pays more for electricity, it will lead to tuition hikes next year?
Of course, when confronted, they resond with some variation of the “one person won’t make any difference” argument. The problem is that every genius on campus has decided the same thing, so only a few of us are conserving power at all.