If you read through a little of that you find that somewhere along the lines someone decided that it would be a good idea -- to encourage energy conservation -- if Pepco would be able to charge higher rates when less energy was being used. Huh? Did I write that correctly, you bet I did.
Yeah, this is exactly what's happening here in Oz... the power companies and the government with huge advertising campaigns to encourage consumers to use less power, and as power consumption decreases annually the cost per kilowatt goes up, each and every July 1st... adding $30 - $40 to each bill until the next rise.
Shoot, we even have the Queensland Government offering householders a $50.00 Climate Smart pack that allows the consumer to substantially reduce their power consumption. Yeah, that's right, the government charging us 50 bucks for a package to help it reduce the amount of power it has to output. You see, the power companies are only resellers. The state government actually produces the power and then sells the right to bill us to private enterprise, which has done nothing but rip us off ever since getting the right 7 - 8 years ago.
Thing is, they need not encourage power conservation too strongly to many, many households. With the average quarterly power bill more than doubling in the last 7 to 8 years [wages/salaries/pensions haven't], many households cannot afford to run appliances or even lighting. An old pensioner lady who lives not far from me now washes her clothes the old fashioned way, by hand, despite having a perfectly good washing machine in her laundry. She showers every other day and has a hand wash on the off days because she can't afford the hot water... and she now cooks on a portable camping stove because she can't afford the power to run her electric stove. And in Winter she is in bed at sunset because she can't afford lighting AND heating.
Yeah, it's a woeful situation, and there are thousands of households in her situation... not that the power companies or state government give a shit. You see, despite using much, much less power than we do [2 of us], she pays roughly the same quarterly as we do because she is on a higher tariff than we are. We pay 21c per kilowatt, she pays 28c per kilowatt. Why is that? It's because she lives in what is considered a more well-to-do area than we do... despite being only 2 streets away. Yup, she is being ripped off, not because she is well-to-do or even has the propensity to pay, but because her address is somehow considered better than ours
Furthermore, she's not the only one being ripped off that way. A guy two doors down from us pays 26c per kilowatt. Why? Because he is on a corner block with two street frontages, and therefore pays higher council rates, and this is how the power companies formulate the tariff rates...on how much land tax/council rates we pay... the higher your council rates the more you pay for power.
