New MA Tactic - Getting Shamed Green by Your Elec. Co.

I just got one of these in the mail & had a good LOL with my wife over it. It's interesting .... but I think the underlying tactic here is to shame you into going "green" ... or suffering with less electricity. You would think an electric company would want you to use as much as you could, seeing that it nets them more cash. Makes you wonder if this administration is offering kickbacks in exchange .... just a thought.

But anyway ... I know all the greenies in the state are gonna go bonkers over this. It's like a competition with their neighbors about which ones can burden themselves the most by using the least amount of electricity. They'll all be hovering around the mailbox every month waiting for the "Home Energy Report". Strange place I live!!

Wow! That's ridiculous, I'd write them and say, "Yes, I am being misread/represented. I hate my neighbors and I'm all about having the largest carbon footprint known to man."

Frickin' unbelievable. JCP&L doesn't do anything like that. They just jail their prices up for no reason.

It might just be that it is so expensive and such a hassle to add generating capacity that it is more profitable to stay with what they have and just raise rates.

Yeah that's more than likely the case ...

ya,
I get those in the mail also and I am like double the usage of all neighbors and like 5 times that of efficient ones. I do not think they compare apples to apples. my bill is about $120 a month right now. including elec hot water and a sump pump that never quits, don't think that is too bad

hey smitty I see you only use 565 kw a month that is excellent, I use about 1400

Yeah your way above me. My last bill was the highest one ever in the 9 years I've been here at $115 ... but I think that's because they had a 34 day billing cycle that month.

Definitely not apples to apples. My house is about 1,600 sq.ft. and they're comparing my electric usage to the new mansions down the street at 5k sq.ft. Not only do they have more "stuff", but everything is bigger to boot.

Smitty, apparently "Your rank is declining".

This time of year we use about 600 KWH per month...in the summer months our usage triples.

Smitty, apparently "Your rank is declining".

This time of year we use about 600 KWH per month...in the summer months our usage triples.

this is opposite of me, in the summer I am around 700kw. that includes 3 window AC's. In the winter my sump pump runs alot more plus lights are on alot more and we cook almost exclusively on the grill in the summer.

You'll probably get a property tax increase this year! How dare you not be as "green" as your neighbors!

is wrong with this world?

Yup, we are all going to have to learn to conserve electric when they shut down all the coal powered plants with nothing to help generate the lost electric.

SMITTY wrote:You would think an electric company would want you to use as much as you could, seeing that it nets them more cash.

Depends, the power distributor pays a very wide margin on the electricity throughout the day. They aren't making much during peak.

In any event this type of information is useless as a gauge of how "green" you are. A couple with no kids who commute a combined 4 hours each day, eat out at restaurants frequently and do many other things a family may be doing at home is going to be "greener". Issues like that alone make it useless for comparison even before you get into the particular variables of people like the sump pump mentioned above.

Man-o-man.... that's a long way from the ads on TV in the late 60's that showed an electrically heated house with the owner leaning out the open door talking to a neighbor. "Feel free to talk a bit longer with your neighbor, electric heat is cheap!". They had all kinds of ads selling power. Now, ha! That's all changed in a big way. I do think this attempt to embarrass you into using less power is a bit far fetched.

Maybe if your real frugal you get like a green star sticker you can put in your front window to make your neighbors jealous.

Freddy wrote:Man-o-man.... that's a long way from the ads on TV in the late 60's that showed an electrically heated house with the owner leaning out the open door talking to a neighbor. "Feel free to talk a bit longer with your neighbor, electric heat is cheap!". They had all kinds of ads selling power. Now, ha! That's all changed in a big way. I do think this attempt to embarrass you into using less power is a bit far fetched.

Yeah, I remember when they were discussing producing electric with nuke plants, it was going to be so cheap to produce they were not even going to meter it! That never happened of course.