FriendBurst Blog

I live in the desert. It gets hot. Cooling of some kind is a necessity. When it gets to be 118 degrees outside, people tend to just melt away without it. Any type of modern day cooling system requires electricity.

Electricity is expensive. Even when I lived in a tiny place back in the late 70’s, just the Girl, the dog and me, to see a $300.00 power bill in the middle of the summer was not unusual. Of course, that was before energy efficiency. So back in the day, we ran our air conditioners and swamp coolers and saved a little of our money each month so that we could bite the big electric bullet in the middle of the summer.

Then more and more people moved onto the grid. More appliances and more air conditioners drawing more power. Occasionally the power company couldn’t keep up. So they raised their rates. They improved the power grid and all the other electrical stuff they need to keep our power on. We still got to run our air conditioners and swamp coolers and save a little money each month for the now bigger bills in the summer.

Then more people moved onto the grid. Even more appliances and air conditioners drawing even more power. Again, there were times when the power company had trouble keeping up. Not as bad with all their new stuff, but trouble nonetheless. So they raised their rates. This time they improved a bit more of the power grid, but also started instituting programs to teach and encourage people to cut back on their usage. Again, we still got to run our air conditioners and swamp coolers, just a little less, and we still had to save a little more money each month for those summer bills.

Then more people moved onto the grid. Gas prices jumped significantly, something to do with refineries in California, and the power company had trouble keeping up again. So they raised their rates again. This time it was not only to continue the energy saving programs and expand on them (rebates for switching out old appliances, etc.), to improve the grid a little more, but also to cover the additional cost of generating the electricity because of the gas prices. So we still ran the air conditioners and swamp coolers, not as cold and a little less, and we still had to save a little more money each month for the summer bills.

Then, because we do pay so much for power, we took the power company’s advice and became energy efficient. We upgraded our air conditioners, water heaters, and major appliances to energy efficient models. We upgraded our insulation, windows, and weather stripping. We started to use trees and awnings to shade our homes from the sun and built our new homes under model energy codes. Those who could afford it took advantage of supplementing their need with a solar supply. We changed our light bulbs, turned off stuff when we weren’t using it, closed off the vents to rooms in our homes that we didn’t always use, and still kept our thermostats up. We did everything the power company taught us and then some.

So you would think we would all be so happy that we are reducing our demand for power, reducing our carbon footprint, and as a result saving money. Yeah, I would too, except that the power company just got to raise their rates again. Seems they need a price increase because we’ve done so well at saving power and money that they can’t pay their stockholders the dividends to which the stockholders have become accustomed.

Don’t you just love corporations?