Sales tax on electricity?

[bignateyk]

According to the Electricity Facts Label for my plan it is 100% wind. Of course, the provider can purchase excess distribution from other providers.

That doesn't mean every bit of energy that you use came from wind power. That just means that you paid for X KWH worth of wind power, and in turn X KWH worth of wind power was put into the grid. They have no way of routing wind energy through the grid straight to your home.

That X KWH worth of wind power could be going to your neighbor and you could be getting all coal generated energy. The end result is the same though regardless of who actually consumes the green energy.

 

[DCal430]

Fuck...our base electricity rate in the summer is over 16 cents for the first 500Kw and over 18 cents after that...BEFORE all the bullshit taxes, regulatory fees, and other shit they hit us with.

I've finally gotten to the point where Happiness will be California in the rear view mirror.

I have SMUD and I pay 10.16 for the first 700 and 18.30 after 700. Do yo have PG&E?

 

[PlasmaBomb]

This isn't even a just law, it's a constitutional amendment. Ridiculous.

But yeah, the entire bill is sponsored by out-of-state groups who simply want to profit under the guise of becoming more "green" (at a ridiculous cost) and creating jobs (they claim 95k in the state, which, while it would be a good line at a comedy club, is also ridiculous. Wind turbine manufacturers are laying people off right now, not hiring).

Sorry, this is totally off-topic.

Don't you need a referendum to make constitutional amendments?

 

[CPA]

That doesn't mean every bit of energy that you use came from wind power. That just means that you paid for X KWH worth of wind power, and in turn X KWH worth of wind power was put into the grid. They have no way of routing wind energy through the grid straight to your home.

That X KWH worth of wind power could be going to your neighbor and you could be getting all coal generated energy. The end result is the same though regardless of who actually consumes the green energy.

Right, I understand that. I guess my point is wind power is generally expensive compared to other power sources. I happened to get a pretty good price, which was my only concern. I don't give a rat's ass where the source comes from.

 

[Wreckem]

Of course there are federal subsidies. No windmill in this world has ever been efficient enough to provide $0.08/kWh power.

Curious as to how you get your "100% renewable power" when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, too :hmm:

The wind never stops blowing in West Texas.

 

[DCal430]

I pay $6 a month and this ensures all of my power comes from renewable sources. It isn't really that expensive people.

 

[jagec]

I pay $6 a month and this ensures all of my power comes from renewable sources. It isn't really that expensive people.

It is if you live in a 4,000 sqft McMansion with poor insulation that you heat to 85 degrees in the winter and cool to 60 degrees in the summer while leaving all of the lights on 24/7.

You know, like most Americans. Why do you hate America?

 

[BoomerD]

That doesn't mean every bit of energy that you use came from wind power. That just means that you paid for X KWH worth of wind power, and in turn X KWH worth of wind power was put into the grid. They have no way of routing wind energy through the grid straight to your home.

That X KWH worth of wind power could be going to your neighbor and you could be getting all coal generated energy. The end result is the same though regardless of who actually consumes the green energy.

Exactly. You get electricity from whatever power source happens to be in the wires...the green energy company merely replaces what you used. The bad part about it is that your local electrical utility usually charges you a wheeling fee for handling that green power...even though they don't actually deliver those exact electrons to you.

 

[PowerEngineer]

There's plenty of ways to store surplus clean enery, aside from batteries used to ease the constant fluctuation, some places feed the extra electricity into water pumps that move water from a lower resevoir to a higher one. Then when extra electricity is needed, let the water run back down hill, adding hyrdo electric power in place of wind/solar.

There many be "plenty of ways to store surplus clean energy", but none of them are readily scalable to the size needed to deal with the 20+% renewable energy goals. Current battery-based projects are orders of magnitude too small (in the range of 1-5 Mwhr storage I think) and pumped storage plants are nightmares to site given their environmental impacts and water rights issues.

 

[piasabird]

There is a charge on everything. It is almost as bad as the phone company.

 

[Red Squirrel]

After all the taxes and regulatory fees are all said and done here in Ontario, they're more than the actual usage. Previously we just had to pay the 5% federal sales tax on top of that but the province decided we weren't poor enough and tacked on the 8% sales tax. Previously necessities were exempt from the provincial sales tax.

I'll have to dig out my bill when I get home tonight to see how that figures into rate. Needless to say we pay a lot, much of it goes to pork green energy products and useless civil servants making million dollar salaries.

Yep it sucks, I pay like $170/mo, I think my usage comes up to around $60. I've thought of how great it would be to go solar or wind but the only real way to save would be to be 100% self sufficient and actually cancel the service. That would be a ballsy move to do as if my system fails I'm on my own.

What's even more sickening is when you look at how much some of those Hydro One execs make. Some are making near millions per year. 😵 Linemen is one thing, some of them do tons of overtime and do lot of hard work, if they hit 100k they deserve it, but execs are pushing a pencil all day and not playing near millions of volts.

 

[rcpratt]

Just saw this in my company's newsletter...

Direct Energy launches 100 percent renewable energy plan. Direct Energy has launched its New Leaf Energy brand, which allows customers to buy power generated exclusively from renewable sources, the first such plan certified by Green-e Energy to be offered to Texas consumers, Fuel Fix.com reported. The new brand was expected to be available in the Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and Corpus Christi areas, among others. Rob Comstock, GM for Direct Energy's residential business in Texas, was quoted as saying: "We see that there is a growing part of the market that is interested in doing something for the environment, whether you see people with reusable bags at the grocery store or [reusable] water bottles." Comstock said New Leaf's energy mix was 98 percent wind power, with the remainder coming from solar, biomass or hydropower. Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, said adding another option for buying renewable power in the state to the several options already available "was consistent with the kind of polling that has been done for over 15 years that says that most Texans would prefer to get clean and green energy from their power company." Source: Sept. 6 Fuel Fix.com

Not sure what that means exactly, or how CPA's provider might differ, but thought it was interesting. It might be that the only difference is the certification...I don't know what the cert requires.

 

[dmcowen674]

50% increase in whole sale prices in 2012, and talking about tripling prices by 2013.

Americans deserve to be raped by the Evil Corporations that they allow to control them.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Americans deserve to be raped by the Evil Corporations that they allow to control them.

If they deserve it; then why do you bitch when it happens instead of doing something about it.

Or you have realized that as much as you complain; you can not make it without them.