New MA Tactic - Getting Shamed Green by Your Elec. Co.

coalkirk wrote:

Freddy wrote:Man-o-man.... that's a long way from the ads on TV in the late 60's that showed an electrically heated house with the owner leaning out the open door talking to a neighbor. "Feel free to talk a bit longer with your neighbor, electric heat is cheap!". They had all kinds of ads selling power. Now, ha! That's all changed in a big way. I do think this attempt to embarrass you into using less power is a bit far fetched.

Yeah, I remember when they were discussing producing electric with nuke plants, it was going to be so cheap to produce they were not even going to meter it! That never happened of course.

No, because they realized it was a cash cow.

We should just all figure out a way to pull ourselves off the grid and make power with coal fired generators.

I'm On Fire wrote:

coalkirk wrote: Yeah, I remember when they were discussing producing electric with nuke plants, it was going to be so cheap to produce they were not even going to meter it! That never happened of course.

No, because they realized it was a cash cow.

We should just all figure out a way to pull ourselves off the grid and make power with coal fired generators.

Make your own steam generated plant in the back yard
My goal is to sell back to the grid. I have ideas on a windmill and solar panels on the roof. The reasons aren't to save money or to go green. I rarely pay anything over $50 for my electric bill and sometimes it's as low as $4/month . My brother and father work for the power company so I have no beef with that. It's about self sustainability. "if" for some reason the Feds wanted to black out the town or control the power flow, they couldn't touch me because I would just pop off their grid. So far electricity is the only service we have at the house. No water bills, sewage bills, or trash bills.

And Good Job Smitty! You got a smiley face and all from the power Co.
They really have stooped low!

I am jealous , I want a bill like that !

if our power company send me one, I am sure it will show I am about 1000 % higher than my neighbors, all homes in sight from my place have been foreclosed on, ours is about the only one left, they are all vacant, no lights, no activities, no meters either !

Hey Smoke, if you don't mind what do you do with your trash? I have Waste Management & they continually raise prices with add on fees, I would love to be able to get rid of them. When I worked it was no problem, just take it in daily & incinerate it but can't do that here.

Burn it. What ever is left gets handed off to friends with methods of their own.

sterling40man wrote:You'll probably get a property tax increase this year! ....

What do you mean "probably"? I live in MA, remember? That's a given .... They don't call it TAXACHUSETTS for nothing .....

Yeah my bill is usually higher in summer due to the A/C's. It's just me & the wifey here - no rugrats. I'm home all day too .... so yeah - Richard is 100% right. There is no real way to compare with anyone. Now that I think of it, that makes this piece of paper even DUMBER than I first thought!

What's next? A "seal of approval" from the government? Complete with "star" stickers? Just like first grade .......

samhill wrote:Hey Smoke, if you don't mind what do you do with your trash? I have Waste Management & they continually raise prices with add on fees, I would love to be able to get rid of them. When I worked it was no problem, just take it in daily & incinerate it but can't do that here.

Sam I do pay to dump my trash. I just meant I don't have a bill for it so I can dump it at my leisure. We mostly recycle and that is free. It is surprising how much that saves on trash dumping. Anything bio-degradable gets put in a pile in the woods (compost) and I save most of my boxes to reuse as shipping boxes when I sell stuff. I have 4 trash cans now and with two trash cans I only went to the dump about every 2-3 months. Now I only go to the dump every 3-4 months. It is $4.00 to dump one load and it can be as big as I can fit in my truck and on my trailer. Do you have a local dump that you can take your own trash too? a lot of folks around here do that because of what you are saying, the waste management is always raising prices. Since I have a driveway that's about a 1/4 mile long I figure if I go to that much trouble to get my trash to the trash men then why not just load it on the trailer and dump it myself.

Trash is a funny thing with people. We make it, we dump it and then think it's suppose to magically disapear. We then complain about the smell (if any) from the local landfill and create stricter laws to hinder land fill from doing their job. So they raise the price and then we complain. I am not saying you are one of these people by any meaning so please don't take it that way. Your question reminded me of City folks moving out from the city, buy large cookie cutter houses, and barge into the town hall meatings to demand landfill changes around here. We recently have been dealing with this type of folk in the last board of suporvisors election. They built these 300-400k$ houses around the land fill and are now complaining about smell. Are they stupid or something? YES!

Hope you find a more affordable way of getting rid of your trash. If you don't already compost or recycle it sure cuts down on the amount that needs to be dumped.

SMITTY wrote:Burn it. What ever is left gets handed off to friends with methods of their own.

sterling40man wrote:You'll probably get a property tax increase this year! ....

What do you mean "probably"? I live in MA, remember? That's a given .... They don't call it TAXACHUSETTS for nothing .....

Yeah my bill is usually higher in summer due to the A/C's. It's just me & the wifey here - no rugrats. I'm home all day too .... so yeah - Richard is 100% right. There is no real way to compare with anyone. Now that I think of it, that makes this piece of paper even DUMBER than I first thought!

What's next? A "seal of approval" from the government? Complete with "star" stickers? Just like first grade .......

Gold Stars! and a G for GRRRREEEEEAAAAT JOB!

Not trying to side track your thread but isn't MA the state with it's own health care system? I bet that accounts for a lot of the taxes.

Thanks Smoke, guess I'm outta luck thats what was getting me the most I do recycle,burn & compost so have very little for trash but have to pay the same as if I had a truckload, Don't even know where the landfill is, I'm basically 25 miles from anything close to a major urban area.

samhill wrote:Thanks Smoke, guess I'm outta luck thats what was getting me the most I do recycle,burn & compost so have very little for trash but have to pay the same as if I had a truckload, Don't even know where the landfill is, I'm basically 25 miles from anything close to a major urban area.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=linesville+pa+landf ... ia&t=h&z=8

I don't know exactly where you live in relation to the center of Linesville PA but that is what I came up with and I am guessing it would be too much of a hassle and waste in gas to get to the nearest one?

What are they charging you now? 30-50$ a month? Do I foresee a incinerator project in your future just kidding.

The closest to me would be at least 40mi.s down past Greenville, I'm right on the Pa/Ohio line near the top of that C shaped Lake Pymatuning. Right now we pay $105 per quarter for one can, they kind of let you slide on some extra since there is no one checking up on them but that's up to the driver & normally he's alone on the truck.

Bottom line they don't have the infrastructure to meet demand. So lets beat up the customer about usage, and guess what if you use less your rates will still go up. So now you use less and your bill stays the same. I worked with a guy 20 plus years ago from Pittsfield and he was always bringing in fliers with programs to buy CFL's which at the time where new and all kinds of rebates, where does that money come from Profits will always be the goal, there business is selling you energy, not saving you money

I hear ya Sierra ...

When I lived in CA around the time when the Enron collapse happened, I remember everyone freaking out about "brownouts" & blackouts due to lack of power. We got a flyer from PG & E stating that we should do our laundry in the evening when there was more power available. I immediately picked up on their angle -- during the day, so many people were drawing from the grid that the power supply actually dropped .... so should I use the dryer during the day, the meter is going to turn slower, due to the limited current available ....... so if you do it at night, they make more money, as the meter is going to spin at normal speed with normal current available.

I remember my microwave sounding like a completely different unit out there compared to when I used it in MA & AZ. The light was dimmer, and the sound slower. No question there wasn't the same amount of power available. Late at night, the pitch would change back to normal. What a scam ....

Smokeyja wrote:Not trying to side track your thread but isn't MA the state with it's own health care system? I bet that accounts for a lot of the taxes.

That's just scratching the surface ....

If you choose not to work in MA & just leach off the system, they will provide you welfare, food stamps, heating assistance, cell phones, & car payments. Pull into the welfare office in Worcester & you feel outclassed with all the Lincolns, Cadillacs, BMW's & M/B's ... THAT'S where MOST of our tax dollars go. The rest line the pockets of the crooked, immoral douchebags up on Beacon Hill.

I knew something wasn't right with these blackouts because I remember the time of year it was. It wasn't in the heat of the summer or the cold of winter, it was either spring or fall (I can't remember which) but I remember vividly thinking to myself, why are they having shortages of power at a time of year when no one is using airconditioning or heating...?
I realized this because my dad worked in a generating plant for many years and I remember him explaining peak load and that they would bring more generators on line at certain times of the day etc.

Yeah this was spring of '01 - at the time I was thinking the same thing.

SMITTY wrote:I hear ya Sierra ...

When I lived in CA around the time when the Enron collapse happened, I remember everyone freaking out about "brownouts" & blackouts due to lack of power. We got a flyer from PG & E stating that we should do our laundry in the evening when there was more power available. I immediately picked up on their angle -- during the day, so many people were drawing from the grid that the power supply actually dropped .... so should I use the dryer during the day, the meter is going to turn slower, due to the limited current available ....... so if you do it at night, they make more money, as the meter is going to spin at normal speed with normal current available.

I remember my microwave sounding like a completely different unit out there compared to when I used it in MA & AZ. The light was dimmer, and the sound slower. No question there wasn't the same amount of power available. Late at night, the pitch would change back to normal. What a scam ....

Smokeyja wrote:Not trying to side track your thread but isn't MA the state with it's own health care system? I bet that accounts for a lot of the taxes.

That's just scratching the surface ....

If you choose not to work in MA & just leach off the system, they will provide you welfare, food stamps, heating assistance, cell phones, & car payments. Pull into the welfare office in Worcester & you feel outclassed with all the Lincolns, Cadillacs, BMW's & M/B's ... THAT'S where MOST of our tax dollars go. The rest line the pockets of the crooked, immoral douchebags up on Beacon Hill.

I remember Dominion Power doing some consulting work for some of the California power plants and I remember my Dad telling me how many idiot engineers worked for the California plants. They didn't even know wtf they were doing out there not to mention the state has been broke forever now.

Another democrat-controlled state at it's finest ... Typical.