Customers who save on electric bills could be forced to pay utility company for lost profits • Louisiana Illuminator
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Louisiana utility companies still want to charge customers for the costs of a new energy efficiency program and for the electricity no longer needed due to that program.
  • SternEnglish
    30•3 months ago

    To a limited extent I can understand charging folks something. On the offhand chance you need to use the grid for power (or heck, to put power into it.), the grid needs to be functional, which takes repairs and maintenance, which takes money. That said, forcing to pay for lost profits is ridiculous.

    • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍English
      39•3 months ago

      Yup.

      However, let me suggest a radical idea:

      Any service that has infrastructure requirements like this, such that there’s a mandatory “base fee” under the usage fee, should be nationalized, and the base fee paid be taxes. Every, and any, service. Water. Sewage. Electricity. Internet. Roads. Any basic need provided, that requires infrastructure that would incur a monthly maintenance fee. De-privatize it.

      This would be my litmus law for nationalizing services.

    • @barsquid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17•3 months ago

      I’d be more amenable to fees if the companies were actually forced to maintain their infrastructure and if the government wasn’t already giving them all big handouts. That comment about nationalizing all of them makes a bunch of sense to me.

  • @RagingHungryPanda@lemm.eeEnglish
    17•3 months ago

    Ah, Louisiana, first you charge people $800 energy bills then you complain that you can’t make it more efficient. Capitalism is doing great.

  • @mkwt@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7•3 months ago

    Too many utilities are incorrectly billing fixed distribution costs on their per-kilowatt hour rate. Where I live, distribution is just over half the cost of electricity, but it is still mostly billed per kilowatt hour, when really those costs are nearly completely fixed.