travis' brain dump

You know what I find disgusting? When we use less and less of a resource in our house and yet it  costs more and more each month. Pretty lame huh?

I’m just irritated that they keep bringing these rates up in exponential percentages and then electing to cut off electricity for people who are 30 days late on the nose. While I’ve been fortunate enough to not have to worry about such things, I can’t help but think about people who are really struggling. What a pain in the rear end. Luckily for some of those people we have programs here in Colorado which help out people who are unable to afford these hikes. The sad part is, it’s those who can afford it which are also helping programs like this out through donations and other things so in the grand scheme of things if you’re helping out and donating then you’re paying not only the hikes you’re incurring but helping others to pay theirs as well.

Just as an example of these hikes, we were paying $0.02506 per kWh at the beginning of this year. From April to June they bumped it up to $0.03849 and in July they slammed it up again to $0.04824. Now to put that into perspective for you since I know you’re seeing it as “only a penny” lets explain what’s going on here. For say, 1000 kWh’s of electricity used, which is a pretty low average for a hot summer and a small house, you have to not only pay your electricity usage fee of $0.040 per kWh but you have to pay the ECA (as wells as other fees) on top of that. Broken down, the following usage+ECA is what you get:

Electric Bill 1st Quarter 2008: $40.11 in usage + $25.06 ECA -> $65.17

Electric Bill 2st Quarter 2008: $40.11 in usage + $38.49 ECA -> $78.60

Electric Bill 3rd Quarter 2008: $40.11 in usage + $48.24 ECA -> $88.35

So what you’re seeing is in the span of 7 months the cost of the same amount of electricity has gone up $23.18 in fees. For some that’s not a real big issue. For others it’s a huge issue. I realize, again, that we’re talking about a matter of pennies here but for someone who are already struggling to pay a $65.00 electric bill along with outrageous amounts for gasoline in order to get to work in the first place to pay that bill, it’s creating some serious hurt.

Now, I realize that the ECA is used to offset some costs, but you’d figure for a company who has a net income of around $105 million in the second quarter this year alone could cut some people a little slack as this goes well beyond ‘ passing the cost along to the customer ‘.

*shrug* but what do I know? i’m just the customer so I have no way of comprehending the “actual reasons” behind such hikes.