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The Dispatch wrote
AEP wants you to pick up storm’s tab
Saturday, September 27, 2008
BY DAN GEARINO, MARK NIQUETTE AND SPENCER HUNT
With the government’s storm-response tab topping $34 million and hundreds of thousands of people struggling to clear trees and replace spoiled food after the Sept. 14 wind storm, American Electric Power is thinking about billing its customers for the cost of restoring their power.
Joseph Hamrock, president and chief executive of AEP Ohio, said yesterday that the fee is an option, but he said it’s too early to speculate about the details.
For some perspective, the 2004 ice storm led to a roughly $1-per-month fee for 12 months for a typical customer. The ice storm affected about half as many people as the 700,000 AEP Ohio customers who lost power two weeks ago. The prospect of a surcharge on customers, many of whom sat in the dark for days, doesn’t sit well with the state’s consumer advocate.
AEP reported $1.1 billion in profit on revenue of $13.4 billion last year in an 11-state territory. In the first six months of this year, AEP has $854 million in profit on $7 billion in revenue. AEP’s Ohio utilities accounted for about $1.2 billion of that revenue. Before the storm, AEP already was making plans to ask its customers to pay more. AEP has a rate proposal filed with the PUCO that would raise Ohio rates 15 percent in each of the next three years.
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Never heard a better excuse to get off the grid and get more solar and wind power!
Let’s bill AEP for every Appalachian resident with lung cancer and every coal miner for black lung and ever natural habitat and mountain top those dipshits in their ugly concrete tower destroyed!
Let’s bill AEP for every Appalachian resident with lung cancer and every coal miner for black lung and ever natural habitat and mountain top those dipshits in their ugly concrete tower destroyed!
There’s something deeply ironic about someone using AEP power to post this.
Let’s bill AEP for every Appalachian resident with lung cancer and every coal miner for black lung and ever natural habitat and mountain top those dipshits in their ugly concrete tower destroyed!
There’s something deeply ironic about someone using AEP power to post this.
Yes there is. I don’t deny that I’m part of the problem, I just see another way.
FIGHT THE POWER BY … uh … USING THE POWER!
FIGHT THE POWER BY … uh … USING THE POWER!
Your default understanding of my statements is of cable-TV like quality.
Are you always a mean person in real life too?
Get off the grid!
HA HA. But seriously, I want to. One of the next goals in my life is to get rid of stuff like a refrigerator and electrical appliances! That way I’ll be more energy independent and only have fresh food.
What about stuff like milk?
Anyway, I think this is a horrible move on AEP’s part. I wish people would just refuse to pay it, and then AEP can just eat the cost.
Think of how much power would have been generated during that storm too!
Don’t you live with merc? Does he want to do that too, because it seems like he might be pissed if he comes home and his fridge is gone?
Big corporations making big profits and still wanting consumers to foot bill? Isn’t that the norm now that the government allows, I mean, look at oil companies and the bail out of the financial companies, yet still the argument holding it up is golden parachutes for executives of failed companies?
Anyway, I think this is a horrible move on AEP’s part. I wish people would just refuse to pay it, and then AEP can just eat the cost.
We pay about 10 cents/kilowatt hour for power (taken from my electric bill).
If this fee is about $1/month per customer that means that if you make a point to use 10 kilowatt hours less power every month, then you can avoid paying this fee.
10 kilowatt hours is the amount of power used by running one 60 watt light bulb 5.6 hours every day for one month.
If you replace two 60 watt light bulbs that you normally use for about 4 hours/day with equivalent light output 15 watt CF bulbs you will save 90 watts, or 10.8 kilowatt hours/month.
THAT is the easiest way to avoid paying this fee to AEP. It’s easy, and if you assume that a CF bulb costs $4 and you buy two and save $12/year then you will have a net savings of $4 after the first 12 months. If you leave your lights on more than 4 hours/day then the savings is even greater.
Turning your computer off for 2 hours per day saves even more for some computers/monitors.
If everyone in Ohio did this AEP would end up eating more than the cost of this fee, with no sacrifice required on any customer’s part.
What really irks me is that they are on pace to earn more profit than last year, are lobbying PUCO to raise rates by 15% PER YEAR for the next 3 years, and now want to recoup these costs as well. If there was market competition, I could see that, but not with the monopoly they exercise. :evil:
If you replace two 60 watt light bulbs that you normally use for about 4 hours/day with equivalent light output 15 watt CF bulbs you will save 90 watts, or 10.8 kilowatt hours/month.
THAT is the easiest way to avoid paying this fee to AEP.
POST OF THE DAY.
That’s my general feeling, too. If you get the government to reduce your risks (i.e., by insulating you from competition), you sort of sign on to have government reduce your rewards as well.
I do think Rockmaster made the most practical point in the thread, though. Going all-solar might be a little out of reach for most people this year (though I do hope that changes within the next decade). Conserving enough energy to cover the costs of cleanup and repairs, though, is a much less daunting proposition, well within most people’s capabilities with just a little thought.
Rockmastermike, please send that as a letter to the Editor to the Dispatch. I hope it gets printed.
hmm. I might just do that… with an introduction note that contractually we as customers are not liable for their company owned equipment.
If this is your take on the topic, why not go buy the stock and reap the benefits? The “if you can’t beat em, join em” approach. Despite the general perceptions (assumptions) it’s not just an option for the rich. People need to get over this “main street v. wall street” BS. If you have retirement investments or your company has investors (public or public) then you are part of “wall street”.
I went without a fridge for 6 months by choice ( making a sculpture out of the copper line the fed the ice maker instead).
it was harder than not having a car or not having a tv- both of which I do now by choice.
the hard part was planning effectively to avoid waste… but let’s face it. the main function of a fridge is to store waste without spoilage until we eventually pitch the stuff anyway.
I think you’re doing it wrong. :P 8)
Smaller sizes that would be consumed in one setting or made into something more value added like how I use milk now. Drink it all now or turn it into cornbread or butter.
Fridges are a pretty new thing compared to the history of food.
Plus also a great way to cut back and possibly eliminate a food product from one’s diet that is too fatty and animal based.
I would not get rid of or unplug Mercs’s fridge without his permission and equal enthusiasm!