Leon wrote:


"David Hall" wrote in message
om...


I am sure that you could if you were willing to build out the
distribution network for the community and keep it maintained and do
all the individual billing and collections,

The electrical company is responsable for maintaining lines. The company
that maintains the lines is not the one that I buy electricity from. I
live in Houston and buy my electricity from a company in Dallas.

Texas is different from most of the country in that they have separated
generation from infrastructure maintenance. Presumably there is some
arrangement whereby the Local Wires Companies are paid by the Retail
Electric Providers. You may not buy electricity from them but one way or
another you're paying for their services.

One reason that large consumers get a discount is that the distribution
infrastructure on the customer's campus is the customer's responsibility,
not the power company's. In residential use the power company (in Texas
the Local Wires Company) is responsible for everything up to the connector
on the customer side of the meter.

If the home owners' association wanted to take care of the infrastructure
the same way that GM does in their plants then I'm sure the power company
would give them the same kind of discount. In effect they'd be becoming
their own Local Wires Company for their neighborhood.

Personally I would not want to live in any community where the home owners
association was responsible for keeping the power going.

with the inevitable bad debt but you have to keep supplying them anyhow,
and absorb the costs
during low usage periods when the overhead charge you apply doesn't
actually cover the overhead required to maintain sufficient capacity
to serve everyone's needs during the peak usage periods.....

If the HOA took care of the billing it could cut the power off to the
family
that does not pay the bill.

If the applicable statutes allowed it. Do they really want the lawsuit when
the baby freezes to death because they cut the power off when it was 30
below?

I suspect that the home owners in my small
subdivision could save at least $225,000.00 per year. 3 years ago a
family
was ecvicted from their home and their home repaired and sold. They
refused
to pay the HOA anual bill of $250.00. I really do not think there would
be problem with non payment.

Fascinating. So the home owners association actually owns the property. I
would not want to live anywhere that I was in the position of renting
property that I had paid for. I'm really kind of disappointed in
Texans--there was a time when anything that high-handed would have gotten
somebody shot.

(any idea
what the cost is when a single neighborhhood step-down transformer
blows and needs replaced on an emergency basis while it is 10 below
outside)

That will never happen in Houston. Transformers will blow but still the
electric company will be responsible for the repair.

Then why would they want to give you a discount?

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)