How to SUBSTANTIALLY reduce electricity use?

[LikeLakes]

Sailin, what you listed is quite an accomplishment! It took not only a lot of research but also a willingness to alter habits and environment to achieve the goals you were looking for. Nicely done!

I think one of the problems is that the savings of energy and dollars that you are achieving took a lot of work on your part. This shouldn't be so hard. I worry about families that are already overwhelmed with the daily struggles of work and kids and finances that maybe don't have the bandwidth to find these kind of savings. I'd like to see families understanding that it is within reach to save on energy expense.

[SailinAway]

Originally Posted by LikeLakes

I think one of the problems is that the savings of energy and dollars that you are achieving took a lot of work on your part. This shouldn't be so hard. I worry about families that are already overwhelmed with the daily struggles of work and kids and finances that maybe don't have the bandwidth to find these kind of savings. I'd like to see families understanding that it is within reach to save on energy expense.

I entirely agree with you! The utility companies go out of their way to obfuscate how much you're paying, for what, and what another plan or company would charge. It used to be the case that Fairpoint would outright lie about plan charges to get you to sign up. That appears to have improved. Not everyone has the ability to research all of this and to be assertive with these companies to get better rates. The phone industry has become impossibly complicated.

There should also be more support for helping people reduce their energy usage and downscale their needs for other things. When recycling was still possible (before China rejected our garbage), my town provided recycling bins. That shows that strategies can be implemented town-wide to reduce waste. If a town can buy and deliver recycling bins, it could also buy and deliver rain barrels. If Eversource wants to double its supply charge, the logical response is to teach people to cut their electric usage in half, as I've done. People's smartphone addiction has led to wasteful consumerism for both the phone itself and phone service. We need to move in the opposite direction, toward basic phones and basic phone service. We're aware of severe environmental problems around things like water and we're acutely aware of inflation right now, but we lack imagination in how we counter these problems. Solutions need to be enacted at the national, state, and local level so that everyone, regardless of their education or access to technology, can take simple steps to reduce their usage.

[pondguy]

I buy a tracfone card every three months for my phone service works out to about $7.48 per month but I don't talk on the phone I just text.

[LikeLakes]

Originally Posted by SailinAway

I entirely agree with you! The utility companies go out of their way to obfuscate how much you're paying, for what, and what another plan or company would charge. It used to be the case that Fairpoint would outright lie about plan charges to get you to sign up. That appears to have improved. Not everyone has the ability to research all of this and to be assertive with these companies to get better rates. The phone industry has become impossibly complicated.

There should also be more support for helping people reduce their energy usage and downscale their needs for other things. When recycling was still possible (before China rejected our garbage), my town provided recycling bins. That shows that strategies can be implemented town-wide to reduce waste. If a town can buy and deliver recycling bins, it could also buy and deliver rain barrels. If Eversource wants to double its supply charge, the logical response is to teach people to cut their electric usage in half, as I've done. People's smartphone addiction has led to wasteful consumerism for both the phone itself and phone service. We need to move in the opposite direction, toward basic phones and basic phone service. We're aware of severe environmental problems around things like water and we're acutely aware of inflation right now, but we lack imagination in how we counter these problems. Solutions need to be enacted at the national, state, and local level so that everyone, regardless of their education or access to technology, can take simple steps to reduce their usage.

Smart phones are here to stay, only to increase in use, that one is a complete dead end for most people, myself included. From an energy use standpoint it's not a huge user, I think the larger problem is the huge expense to a family to keep say 5 phones and the cell plan, that expense didn't exist 30 years ago.

Imagine if we could say "gee, my expense for eggs and milk and beef and rice have gone way up, so hey Eversource, I'm going to pay you less for energy this month, just deal with it". To me that's what they do to us in reverse, there is no scenario where Eversource can lose money, they just ask for rate hikes and NH PUC rubber stamps them. They were allowed to shut down and write off losses on plants that ratepayers paid hundreds of millions to upgrade just a few years ago, then they tell us that rates have to rise due to demand. It's madness. I agree totally with you that we need to, in return, reduce their revenue by conserving where we can.

[John Mercier]

The Eversource rate hikes are mostly to upgrade the lines.
Can't build all these new homes and not upgrade the lines that supply the electricity.

The actual power hike is due to the increase in natural gas prices.
We used to have to sell to the US... because pipelines don't extend to Europe from here. But with the LNG option, and federal changes to open those markets, we have been building facilities to export.

Eversource gave us plenty of options to curtail this... we just didn't avail ourselves of them.

[SailinAway]

Originally Posted by LikeLakes

Imagine if we could say "gee, my expense for eggs and milk and beef and rice have gone way up, so hey Eversource, I'm going to pay you less for energy this month, just deal with it". To me that's what they do to us in reverse, there is no scenario where Eversource can lose money, they just ask for rate hikes and NH PUC rubber stamps them. They were allowed to shut down and write off losses on plants that ratepayers paid hundreds of millions to upgrade just a few years ago, then they tell us that rates have to rise due to demand. It's madness. I agree totally with you that we need to, in return, reduce their revenue by conserving where we can.

That's a really important point, LikeLakes. I think it's the same with Consolidated---replacing their aging infrastructure and raising rates to pay for it, with no loss of revenue for them.

I think the most important long-term change that needs to happen is to make environmentally sound energy, water, etc. affordable for everyone. We would all jump at that opportunity. For me personally, the new federal subsidies won't bring solar electric within my financial reach,much as I would love to go solar.