On Mar 14, 7:44*am, Bob123 wrote:
On Mar 14, 7:56 am, Edge wrote:

In northern Illinois where I live, electricity is provided by ComEd.
However ComEd is really two companies. One delivers electricity and
the other generates electricity. In my last bill, that portion that
was billed for "Electricity Supply Services" accounted for only 55
percent of the total bill. As the guy who writes the checks, the
simple formula I use is Total Cost / kWh. This comes out to $0.149 per
kWh. On the bill the stated cost of a kWh is only $0.06968.

I agree with your assessment as far as your bill goes. *However,
if you use ONE additional kwh, what is the additional cost ? *I bet
it works out to .069 cents.

In my area, the bill has a "fixed" cost, whether I use any or not,
and
a "useage" cost, which is based on the number of kwh I use.

If I use NO electric power for that month, my cost per kwh using your
reckoning would be infinite. *It's not unfair, just ambiguous. A
power
company has to cover it's fixed cost whether you turn on your lights
or not, since you want it to always be at the ready.

I think 14.9 cents per kwh is a bit on the high side, but not
unreasonabley so.

Check out that 'fixed' cost. It may be for them to 'make power
available', thus when they fail on that contract, you should NOT have
to pay.

When I lived in California [in one of the mildest climates in the
world] we paid approx $300/mo for electricity for two people in a
house with gas hot water and heating! one fridge, no freezer. I think
they figured out how to charge what the market will bear. The
utilities company got so greedy that they quit repariing and fixing
their infrastructure, so transformers were blowing up regularly and
the slightest windstorm would knock trees down causing power outages.
It was a national disgrace - highest rates with the highest number of
outages in the US.

Anyway, to hype the bill the utilities company started that long list
of itemization with one of those charges for "making available" power
so everytime one of those tiny winds came up and blew down a tree and
we had an outage I DEMANDED A REFUND FOR THAT CHARGE based upon the
fact that they had failed to perform and it is illegal in the US to
collect for services NOT rendered. I got it, $0.06 credit for the
power being off for 24 hours, but once customers started demanding
their money back for failure to perform, suddenly there was money to
repair the infrastructure and the outages diminished to more
acceptable levels. I found out later that the movement to demand
refund cost the utitlities company something in excess of several
$100,000's every event. Probably included employee time to manually
adjust each bill!

Now I live in AZ, where the builders seem to think electricity is
free! the way they put in appliances, lighting, and stuff! Just
noticed that everytime the news starts to carry comments about the
high price of electricity, we suddenly have a power outage. Lasts
about two hours, just long enough to make you panic and realize WE
NEED POWER!, but not long enough time to destroy your food in the
fridge, etc. ...and the news stories stop. Now, you just have to ask
yourself, "Do I believe in coincidences?"