National Grid has added a small charge on all of their heating customers’ bills for January because the company didn’t deliver as much energy as it expected to.
The National Weather Service says this past January was the warmest ever on record. That probably means you didn’t need as much energy to heat your home. So now, National Grid is tacking a surcharge onto your energy bill to make up for the difference.
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What is there for us to do? We’re hopeless when it comes to big money after our wallets!
This reminds me of a water district in Washington State that begged its customers to conserve water. They did such a good job that the water company didn’t make enough money that year and instituted a surcharge. Its customers were absolutely delighted.
Hey, give them a break, how on earth do you expect them to pay their CEO his multi million dollar salary if energy demand is down. He may have to sell 1 of his 3 houses just to make ends meet. This just goes to show the folly of conservation from the consumers stand point. You get screwed anyway, might was well leave every light on and crank the heat, at least I’m getting something for my money.
Well it seems like they believe in global warming.
Sounds like a public utility company. I don’t think the private ones can get away with this.
I don’t understand how we can attack Microsoft as a monopoly and allow public utility companies continue to exist. At least with Microsoft, you have some choice not to purchase their products. With public utility companies, you have no such choice. And, when you try to conserve energy, they break it off in you anyway. Like the government, they know that they have no competition and you have no choice but to bend over and take it.
AB CD & Shane: This company is not a public utility. Their website states:
“We are a wholly owned subsidiary of National Grid, an international, London-based company.”
I live in Nebraska, where all of the power is publicly owned, and I can tell you they don’t pull stunts like this. Quite the contrary, we have some of the lowest rates in the country. The only places that have lower rates are power plants that are virtually built right on top of coal mines. For your information, on my power bills, when I conserve energy, the public utility here actually gives me an “Energy Conservation Discount.”
Stop spreading disinformation and do some research before you post statements like yours.
OK, my logic was that a private company can be sued over the surcharge. A similar thing happened in Massachusetts when one customer built their own generator and the utility wanted them to pay for the power they weren’t using anymore.
Someone should get in touch with the NYState Public Service Committee, who has juristiction on this one. That would be Elliot Spitzer’s job. I think if he wants votes from the area in NY who uses Nat’l Grid, he should get on this one quickly.
My comment was not focused on this company in particular but rather on any company that has a monopoly and no competition. If there is a competing provider for electricity in the area in question, then the customers should switch if they do not like it. If the company loses enough customers, they will change their policy or risk going out of business. If there is no competition and the energy company in question has a government contract for the area in question then you may call it what you want, but it is a monopoly. Sometimes, a company with a monopoly will take advantage of their customers and sometimes not. The one in your area may not. The point is, that without competition, customers have no choice.
I live in an area that was pretty badly affected by Katrina. Here, our public utilities have raised rates considerably since. Also, in the last few years, the price for natural gas has more than tripled in our area. I am not saying that we deserve a break because of Katrina but we are faced with the prospect of paying whatever the local public monopolies charge or going without utilities. There is no competitor in our area.
We have public power in Washington State, but that didn’t prevent a CEO from signing a 300k “consulting” contract with one of his buddies or from signing a terrible contract with Enron. When caught, the CEO bailed out with a Golden Parachute and we were left paying higher rates.
Most utility companies in this country are “private” companies that are owned by shareholders. Most all are heavily regulated by a state utilities regulator that has to approve each and every charge made to customers.
So the regulator (i.e. the government) approved these charges:
According to the Public Service Commission, which is the watchdog agency for National Grid, the company has every right to tack on the charge during the heating season, if they overestimate the amount of energy needed.
[i.e. we approved this method of billing customers ahead of time]
It works the opposite way also. If there is an abnormally cold month, and customers use more energy than expected, National Grid must issue that same two percent to customers.
Now before you whine “Oh, they get to tack on a surcharge if they overestimate! Then no wonder they are constantly overestimating.” (11 times in 24 months, vs 7 times they underestimated).
1) It’s in their interest to guage accurately, since they’ll make more money selling actual energy, than with a 2% surcharge on a lower amount.
2) You probably want your public utility to overestimate a little, lest you run out of energy and have rolling blackouts like we had in California 3 years ago. (Enron and power trading aside, we had a net of electricity imports into the state at that time.)
Wouldn’t you rather pay a slight premium to know that you won’t freeze to death if all the weather forecasters are wrong?
This is exactly how the utilities planned and operated 30 years ago, building gold-plated power plants and lots of excess capacity. But you never saw it broken out into:
1) Rate for capacity you actually used.
2) Rate for backup capacity you didn’t use, or for that boondoggle of a nuclear reactor we built, or for the outdated plant we have to keep open to save jobs.