HYDRO SCREWS UP AND WE PAY
Once upon a time, Ontario Hydro was one of the provincial sacred cows, touted as the backbone of the economy, boasted about in international conferences.
Oh sure there were farmers complaining about how much it cost per pole to electrify their farms. And newspapers occasionally ran stories of Hydro cutting off customers through error or handing out exorbitant bills when a meter went wonky.
Ontario Hydro and the municipal utilities that actually fed the electricity to consumers were fat-cat organizations staffed with executives lapping greedily at every last bit of cream in the public saucers. (Fred Gardiner, after whom the expressway is named, retired as the most important municipal politician in Canada but stayed on the Toronto power board because the part-time job gave him a limousine.)
Then came all the generation projects that skyrocketed in cost, particularly in the nuclear field where Hydro boasted about the world's best production until some pipes rusted out. The old question about nuclear power, whether it was safe, was replaced by concerns about whether it was affordable.
In 2011, our Hydro bills are enormous. The billing envelope is stuffed with pamphlets urging us to scrap our beer fridges and singing the praises of the Smart Meter. They should put in apologies instead.
Ah yes, the Smart Meter! Hydro think they're really smart because it makes so much more money using a meter that has been found to be up to 50% inaccurate in some cities where it was introduced with lavish ad programs. I think the Smart Meters are dumb, dumb, dumb, and even the premier has acknowledged complaints that the Smart Meter can goof when it comes to overcharging during low periods of use.
I don't really go along with all the Internet worry that the Smart Meter is a health hazard. But I do support those who say it's a menace to our wallet. The stories are endless about how bills have soared even when the users are only doing laundry at 3 a.m. on a holiday Sunday.
The idea is sound, but hardly new. When I bought my house in the 1960s, Etobicoke Hydro had a electric switch on my fuse board which turned off electricity to my hot-water tank during peak power needs. It was never a problem and I got a reduced rate.
So I understand what Hydro is trying to do, to even out the demand so it can handle the peaks better, but I don't understand my resulting bills which have increased even though Mary has adjusted chores to use electricity most during off hours.
In fact, I think Hydro is cheating me and many Ontario residents and that promising to examine and to end this cheating would be a wonderful issue for the Ontario Tories. The McGuinty government has floundered into pledges to reduce electricity costs but when you add them all up, our Hydro costs go up and up and up.
I have a nice cottage on a point in the Trent River and a modest bunkie beside it which is seldom used. I wrote about the outright thievery of the Hydro bills on both buildings in a blog last Nov. 23 entitled Should Ontario Hydro Be Prosecuted. As a minimum before a class action suit, either the Ombudsman should take action or the new Conservative government at Queen's Park should appoint a special arbitrator just to deal with the cheating and ineptitude. (One reason the Tories will win this fall's election is because of the McGuinty government failure to deal with the Hydro mess.)
In my blog, I detailed the mistakes that are so obvious, a Hydro chap on the phone floundered into incomprehensibility in a defense.
And it just festers each bill. I have just opened my last from the cottage. For three months - when I was in hospital - there was only 1 kWh used in the main cottage. Yet the bill is $86.88, which I submit is the highest charge in the world for 1 kWh. I used no power at all for the second cottage, the bunkie, but the charge is $75.30.
Up to two years ago, there was no monthly charge for a seasonal building where no electricity was used. That has now been waived in Hydro's drunken insistence on overcharging us. There is a minimum monthly charge of $23.98 even if you don't use the building for years.
Do you think that's fair, I asked a Hydro chap on the phone after my first two attempts to get through went into nothingness? Well, he said, everyone has to pay it. So if you steal from everyone, it's no longer theft but policy, I asked. And he didn't reply. But then, what could he say since he, as a symbolic representative of all Hydro employees, was like a blood-soaked murderer caught standing over the victim still holding the bloody butcher knife.
Go get'em, Tim Hudak! Electrocute the gouging policies and smarten up the Smart Meters!
Once upon a time, Ontario Hydro was one of the provincial sacred cows, touted as the backbone of the economy, boasted about in international conferences.
Oh sure there were farmers complaining about how much it cost per pole to electrify their farms. And newspapers occasionally ran stories of Hydro cutting off customers through error or handing out exorbitant bills when a meter went wonky.
Ontario Hydro and the municipal utilities that actually fed the electricity to consumers were fat-cat organizations staffed with executives lapping greedily at every last bit of cream in the public saucers. (Fred Gardiner, after whom the expressway is named, retired as the most important municipal politician in Canada but stayed on the Toronto power board because the part-time job gave him a limousine.)
Then came all the generation projects that skyrocketed in cost, particularly in the nuclear field where Hydro boasted about the world's best production until some pipes rusted out. The old question about nuclear power, whether it was safe, was replaced by concerns about whether it was affordable.
In 2011, our Hydro bills are enormous. The billing envelope is stuffed with pamphlets urging us to scrap our beer fridges and singing the praises of the Smart Meter. They should put in apologies instead.
Ah yes, the Smart Meter! Hydro think they're really smart because it makes so much more money using a meter that has been found to be up to 50% inaccurate in some cities where it was introduced with lavish ad programs. I think the Smart Meters are dumb, dumb, dumb, and even the premier has acknowledged complaints that the Smart Meter can goof when it comes to overcharging during low periods of use.
I don't really go along with all the Internet worry that the Smart Meter is a health hazard. But I do support those who say it's a menace to our wallet. The stories are endless about how bills have soared even when the users are only doing laundry at 3 a.m. on a holiday Sunday.
The idea is sound, but hardly new. When I bought my house in the 1960s, Etobicoke Hydro had a electric switch on my fuse board which turned off electricity to my hot-water tank during peak power needs. It was never a problem and I got a reduced rate.
So I understand what Hydro is trying to do, to even out the demand so it can handle the peaks better, but I don't understand my resulting bills which have increased even though Mary has adjusted chores to use electricity most during off hours.
In fact, I think Hydro is cheating me and many Ontario residents and that promising to examine and to end this cheating would be a wonderful issue for the Ontario Tories. The McGuinty government has floundered into pledges to reduce electricity costs but when you add them all up, our Hydro costs go up and up and up.
I have a nice cottage on a point in the Trent River and a modest bunkie beside it which is seldom used. I wrote about the outright thievery of the Hydro bills on both buildings in a blog last Nov. 23 entitled Should Ontario Hydro Be Prosecuted. As a minimum before a class action suit, either the Ombudsman should take action or the new Conservative government at Queen's Park should appoint a special arbitrator just to deal with the cheating and ineptitude. (One reason the Tories will win this fall's election is because of the McGuinty government failure to deal with the Hydro mess.)
In my blog, I detailed the mistakes that are so obvious, a Hydro chap on the phone floundered into incomprehensibility in a defense.
And it just festers each bill. I have just opened my last from the cottage. For three months - when I was in hospital - there was only 1 kWh used in the main cottage. Yet the bill is $86.88, which I submit is the highest charge in the world for 1 kWh. I used no power at all for the second cottage, the bunkie, but the charge is $75.30.
Up to two years ago, there was no monthly charge for a seasonal building where no electricity was used. That has now been waived in Hydro's drunken insistence on overcharging us. There is a minimum monthly charge of $23.98 even if you don't use the building for years.
Do you think that's fair, I asked a Hydro chap on the phone after my first two attempts to get through went into nothingness? Well, he said, everyone has to pay it. So if you steal from everyone, it's no longer theft but policy, I asked. And he didn't reply. But then, what could he say since he, as a symbolic representative of all Hydro employees, was like a blood-soaked murderer caught standing over the victim still holding the bloody butcher knife.
Go get'em, Tim Hudak! Electrocute the gouging policies and smarten up the Smart Meters!
2 comments:
Nicely put. Just one serious "disconnect" is made in this otherwise logical train of thought, a crucial oversight, and possibly a tad ironic given that elsewhere you mention that both you and your significant seem to have a certain amount of physical difficulty getting around town and finding suitable parking.
You yourself may not accept the microwave induced incremental damage to health argument. Nevertheless it is science, and incontrovertible medical fact that the bi-directional frequencies enabled by the smart grid routers, collectors and meters couple with your house wiring as well as with all other smart meters and the collectors that feed them. YOU (and bees, bats, butterflies, birds, indeed all navigational creatures on this earth) are coup-led into this global continuous circuit. And so is your own bio-circuitry. the combined impact of all the components of the grid make it more of a slow griddle. The frequencies are way over any possible building code, electrical code or safety code limits. the smart grid induces decline, gradual electrical failure of your all too human biology due to the microwaves overriding your brain and leading to rapid depolarization of nerves and muscles of the body billions of times a second. Ask the military, this is their specialty, ultra low frequency weapons used for lethal harm. All manner of disability results from being electromagnetically induced, disability precipitated by the illegal electrical induction of your uninsulated human body (and that of every biological entity). Your cable for your TV has more insulation and protection from frequency conflict than you do. EMF electrical induction is not only illegal. Its serious risk is routinely used as hard sciebntific medical fact for educational medical credits for continuing education taught to doctors and medical students under the auspices of the American Academy of Family Physicians and Surgeons.
http://www.thermoguy.com/emfeducation.html
PS. The nuclear pipes are rusting from electromagnetically induced metal corrosion. Your Hydro bill is due to microwave frequencies which generate harmonics, as does arcing from incorrect installation under live load, as well as currents caused by the grid itself, all of which is cumulatively fed by the microwaved frequency enabling radiation emitting bi-directional device called a smart router collector which must be added to to the frequencies from the bi-directional microwave frequency enabling device called a smart meter which measures all of this as "usage". so the harder you try to save the less it matters. The meters and the grid are in effect operating like a casino, one rigged in favour of the house, Hydro. The meter itself is not designed to withstand this EMF field any more than you are.
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