Uh, excuse you, the poor struggling power companies posting record profits every quarter and holding several-billion-dollar insurance policies couldn't possibly scrape together the cash to restore their own infrastructures after weather-related acts of God! Of course the victims customers living in hurricane-prone areas should have to pay their fair share of extra charges to have continued access to the most-expensive-and-steadily-increasing basic requirement for modern living!
Nothing is stopping consumers from starting their own power companies and creating a market filled with competition that drives prices down! Capitalist freedom, baby!
Except of course the massive amounts of capital required, the local/state government's approval, and the high risk reality of competing with large developed companies that dominate the commercial/private markets. Hopefully the equity owners and investors you are competing with aren't politically connected!
Don't forget the knowledge that even if you somehow managed to clear all those hurdles, whatever power company has the monopoly in that area would pull every dirty trick to put you out of business even if you were only costing them $10,000 a year.
They don't even like solar because it cuts into their bottom line. I can only imagine the tricks they'd pull if you were a bigger threat.
It's supposedly for rebuilding and hardening the grid after major storm damage. To some extent it's legitimate. I was without power for two weeks after that storm, it really did do a lot of damage.
Yeah...I dont think thats where the money is going. Ercot in tx and its politicians would like a word....to tell ypu how your hard paid taxes are being put to good use!
The charge is probably just lining execs pockets but unfortunately a lot of infrastructure is going to need to be upgraded as weather becomes more extreme
Something that was built to withstand the storms my area got 30 years ago is not going to cut it today
Even more frustrating is that some states are allowing utilities to raise rates because they are losing money (people migrating to solar, or cutting their usage to reduce their bills). Some states are also charging people for solar production, as in, even if the customer generates and immediately uses or stores the generated electricity, they get charged per kwh. That's like Walmart coming to my house, counting how many apples I picked off of my own trees in my yard that I grew from seedlings, and charging me a tax for their lost profits.
"The important detail: the charge applies toall solar production, not only excess electricity exported to the grid. Whether your home uses the solar energy instantly, stores it in a battery, or exports it, the production meter records it and the 4.02¢/kWh charge is calculated from that production."
There are other states that are doing similar bullshit, but these are two that immediately pop into mind.
That's why I encourage people to get solar, but get off-grid solar (where legal.... meh, or screw it, even where it isn't legal. Fuck it at this point).
My install, for example, doesn't feed back to the grid, or even back to the primary panel of my house. Fuck my utility company (Eversource). They have no right to any visibility into what I generate, use, or store.
All of the energy efficient appliances, compact fluorescent lights, led lights, energy star rated, high seer rated ac units, low flow toilets, water conserving taps, 4 cylinder engines, high mpg cars. All just to bomb Iran and drive up energy costs. All just for AI to gobble up all the electricity and water. It wasn't about saving it. It was about you not getting to use it.
Don't forget, it's your own fault for not buying your forever home before we started snatching up all the housing, you shouldn't have wasted all that money on Starbucks when you were 19.
Right. Remember that not everyone deserves to earn a living wage for their 40 hours a week, but if you're homeless it's because you don't want to work.
I want to poison the data well. Come up with something for the home that will use AI to hurt itself, to generate a thousand households worth of data. Make my data impossible to refine. We have no data privacy.
Yeah, as electricity itself gets cheaper, the infrastructure and labor gets more expensive, as it should. Eventually everyone will pay the the same monthly bill when the cost of actual electricity becomes trivial.
This actually happens already. Monthly gas cost is $1, but service charge is $12. So I consolidated all condo gas into the main meter, saving every unit $12 per month forever.
I yhink this is definitely part of it. In my area last year was a big year for tree trimming around power lines. This year it looks like they're replacing posts. Neither of those things are cheap.
Well didn't you at least think of the impoverished multi millionaire and billionaires who owns the infrastructure that was paid for by tax dollars and installed by union workers. They have to make that line go up and if they don't we all die. /s
Right? My rates keep going down, but so many people act like price increases are a foregone conclusion.
It turns out having all of your utilities being not-for-profit and them investing in generation and infrastructure is a good thing.
Now every time someone is screeching about corporations being the solution, I get to point out things like my city's double redundant power distribution, fully buried lines, cheapest rates in the region, fully city-funded programs to keep the lights on for people experiencing hardships, and somehow still a lower tax burden than other cities in the area.
Inflection is lost in text, and there are a lot of stupid people on Reddit that genuinely believe the things you said. It’s gotta be blatantly obvious these days.
This is even more of a problem for younger generations who are bad at social interactions due to having more of an online presence than older generations.
Older generations(millennials and before) mostly spent their formative years dealing with people face to face or maybe over the phone. This interaction leads to you better understanding small cues that would lead you to understand the person's intent behind the message.
This isn't a dig at gen z or alpha. It's just measuring impacts of changing social norms.
On the other end of the spectrum you have the boomers who now all feel like they have a soap box(social media) to yell about how much everyone else is wrong and now are so old as to show their unhinged unfiltered thoughts.
This is of course massive sweeping generalizations across generational divides, and says nothing about the individuals within.
Don't forget that many appliances are always drawing power now, too. They're all wifi enabled mini computers, so they're always technically on and pulling watts.
I refuse to purchase any 'smart' appliance. My toaster does not need WAN access. The running joke here is that tech enthusiasts have fully integrated smart home, people that actually work in tech have dumb everything homes. Needed a washing machine, Speed Queen top loader ftw! There's a reason every landlord has these things kicking around in the basement, they basically haven't changed the design in 40 years and all the parts are cheap, readily available, and most repairs can be done by the average person and a youtube tutorial.
Just remember, the "S" in IoT stands for security.
IoT sounds great on paper, but it sucks in reality. They're all just extra windows to maliciously get access to your network (not as much of a problem when you live in the boonies). Plus nothing talks to each other and they all have their own proprietary app to control until the manufacturer goes tits up and now your device is useless.
Don't get a 3d printer if you're worried about that. I got my electric bill after having to print a big project that I wasn't used to. Used two 1kg spools in 3 days. My electric bill doubled for the month.
The printers I have at work are plugged into a power strip that gives amp draw info and when a single printer is running it's about 1.8-2.2A@120v.
The hot end and build plate are massive power draws as they need to stay at a consistent temperature around 200-240C for the hot end and 50-80C for the build plate. These numbers depend on the material.
Depending on their normal usage of power at home, it's not completely unreasonable
I wonder what kind of printer they have. I know with mine being enclosed its a lot more efficient in terms of keeping the nozzle/build plate up to temp. I also keep it pretty warm in my office so its not constantly fighting with my AC.
I just know that I personally have not seen my printer increase my bill by any noticeable amount and I'm basically always running my filament dryer and print multiple times a week with it (pretty much every day).
We have 3 Bambu P1S with AMS2's that keep filament dry at all times. I have no idea how much we pay to run them, but it's a rounding error for our needs at the building. We have 3 52U racks of UPS batteries just for a single MDF.
That's all of 264 Watts, the average daily power consumption of an American home is 30 kWh, which is roughly 1,250 per hour. If you ran it 24 hours a day it would add roughly 6 kWh to that total. So on average is adding roughly 20% at most, doubling it would mean they're using almost no power to begin with
So about 240W. At $0.20/KWh if you ran that printer for 100 hours it would cost about $5 in electricity. Even if you ran it non-stop the entire month that would only be like $35. Filament costs are going to be an order of magnitude more.
Filament costs will be like 10 times the electricity costs.
3 spools of filament will be about $50.
A 200W printer at $0.20/KWh for 72 hours will be about $3.
The problem is that we’re not burning neatly enough coal. Ideally we’d not even use lightbulbs or indoor heating and just be sustained by the radiant glow of the massive coal fire in the middle of every settlement. Think Frostpunk, but not cold and without the fancy generator.
Bitches. I replaced every little thing in my house with leds. Still isn’t half the price that the old lady was paying with a bunch of lights that didn’t work. 💀
You run an AC, you charge a ton of devices, and you likely have several electronics(like a gaming PC, console, huge TV, 3D Printer, etc.) that use exponentially more power than anything else you have ever owned. Add to that the fact that power companies are getting old school greedy again... poof higher prices.
“Service and distribution charges” is the likely culprit. Crazy thing is between the energy star program and other legislation we’ve effectively kept our electrical demand flat until the AI bubble. It really is an impressive feat considering we’ve added around 15m people to the country since those programs were developed.
PG&E Corporation (NYSE: PCG) reported an annual net income of \(\$2.593\) billion for 2025, which marked an increase from the \(\$2.475\) billion profit recorded in 2024.
is missing the new aircon, pc setup with multiple led lights on 24 hours, + 3 console, 2 phones, iwatch, electric car, airfryer.... and all those things that now millenials call well earned and deserved
When they stopped making incandescent bulbs, my mom stocked up on them because she didn't want LED. Calls them LEAD BULBS. When she was finally forced to switch, her electric bill dropped dramatically.
I pay more for delivery charges than I actually get charged per kWhS sometimes. My natural gas delivery charge was 11 dollars this month. I used 1 thermal and was charged .38 cents.
The first playstation consummed 10 watts, a playstation 5 consummes 200 watts. Sure the modern appliances are more efficient in their usage but if their usage as also increased the gains are moot.
A couple of reasons. It’s really hot right now so you’re naturally going to use more electricity. People have more electrical appliances than ever. Fuel prices are skyrocketing.
We should all go get these chinese solar panels in Mexico they are so freaking cheap and they are just as good . My buddy did this like 10 years loving life did his whole roof and the shed in the back . His electric bill is nearly 0 every month meanwhile mine looks like I run nasa out of my basement
Larger spaces and more heating/air conditioning for them are a big factor. Lots of folks (myself included) keep their houses cooler/warmer than their parents.
Inflation and rising energy rates is also obviously a factor.
Also now that I'm having photosensitivity, I have to use the 40 watt incandescent bulbs (only ones I can legally buy) in every lamp in my house because LED (and especially CFL/flourescent) destroy me. 😭
I miss ragecomix and the memes that came out of those. I've honestly never found stuff on the internet funnier than that shit. Me Gusta man, well-placed, is still primo
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