Let's start with my electric bill. As I have reported before, my bill was very consistently $10.05 a month for about two years, including summers. This can only have been attributable to my solar panels. But FPL has been leaning on the state legislature to allow it to bill, and charge, differently, so that people with solar panels will pay more for the electricity they're not using (so they'll be less motivated to have solar panels, which interfere with FPL's profits and dominance). My bill last month was in the mid $20s (I had the heat on for parts of two days), and the one I got today is $15.97. ($16, OK?) No heat this past month. And no AC until May.
I don't care that much about the bills, because they're still much less than I was paying before, and besides, I think it was insane that FPL was paying me the same amount per kWh that they were charging me per kWh. The proportion of people with solar panels is (still) small, but FPL has to make a profit. And they still have to create power even for me, when I'm not making my own. So they have to maintain the wires, etc. They had to charge me more than they were paying me, unless they already were, as represented by the minimum monthly bill.
The problem is that legislators, whose constituency is donors, not voters, do whatever the donors want them to do. Excuse me for putting it this way, but fuck the voters. Candidates know that campaign war chests are important, because it's worth much more to be visible than it is to make a good argument, because voters -- excuse me again -- are idiots. Voters chase shiny objects (and empty and moronic catchphrases). It's the donors who pay for the bling.
A few election cycles ago, there was an item on the ballot, and it was about "medical marijuana." I'm not going to get started on what a scam "medical marijuana" is, but whatever anyone thought it was, or wanted it to be, the voters wanted it. They passed it with a considerable margin. But for also who knows what reason, the legislators didn't want it. So they encumbered it, so it would be very hard to actualize. What was it I said? Oh, yeah: fuck the voters.
And then, of course, there's the coronavirus issue. "Dr" Ron DeSantis has decided that there should be no mask or vaccination mandates, no matter how badly they're needed, nor how badly the "people" want them. So he and his state congress stooges prevented localities or even large enough businesses (and schools) from requiring them.
I heard on the radio today that Tallahassee (the legislature) is on a frenzy to arrogate to itself as much power as it can, at the expense of counties and municipalities.
Sometimes, we're a "purple" state. Usually, we're a "red" state. But the current administration acts like what it most commonly bitterly criticizes, which is a state/government that controls everyone's lives, and tells everyone what they can and can't do, no matter what the residents of this state want.
I've listened to Ron DeSantis speak. He's one of the stupidest people I've ever heard. (No, not as stupid as Donald Trump, OK? But he's up there.) And a dishonest hypocrite...? And he's being talked about as a likely, even possibly favored(!), candidate in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries. I told you about voters.
I misstated something in the first paragraph. FPL won't be charging more for the electricity its customers with solar panels aren't using. It will be paying them less for the electricity they're not using, but which, instead, they're selling to FPL. This in itself would not be a huge deal (and it would be appropriate for them generally to charge more than they pay), except if I remember correctly, they want to pay about 1/3 of what it would have cost the customer to have bought electricity (except the customer doesn't have to buy that electricity at that hour, because s/he is creating her or his own with solar panels).
ReplyDeleteI don't know what it costs FPL to make electricity whatever way they make it now, so I don't know what the mark-up is on selling it. But for a long time, they've been willing to pay the same as they charged, according to determinations from the PSC, so it's hard to imagine that they were giving away 2/3 of what it cost them. Most likely, they were giving away a lot less than that. And if they had any brains (excuse me again), they'd make electricity the same way I do. They can't keep burning stuff, since they're going to run out of the stuff they burn. It's -- you know -- not renewable. And it keeps getting increasingly expensive. Again, if they have any brains, they already know that.