they would have substantially cut their air conditioning and heater bills, since both wouldn’t have to run so long.
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This is a plus till the Utilities figured out they were selling less energy but would have to raise OUR rates to make up the ‘lost’ money.
Remember the oil companies used to ‘pee and moan’ about the additives in fuel - not so much as the territorial, but the fact they had to put the additives in.
When, during an ‘oil crisis’ Prez “W” offered that EPA would drop the additives (for a while) with the Oil Companies responding well, that won’t save much, something has to be in there.
Remember a public utility can work on a regulated profit margin - say 5% and if they only hit 4.99% - they can claim a loss for the year.
If we all could do that, imagine what the scams would be to drop the profit margin....(on paper)
Yes indeed. I've seen that happen every place I've lived. One partiicularly blatent example was Snohomish County, WA back in the 1980s. The utility company built a nuclear plant without public hearings (as I understand it). The people sued and actually won their case. The judgement was that the never opened plant be torn down and every household in the county was eligible for up to $4000 in funds to be used for approved weatherization projects. We moved there at about that time, and we hired a contractor to superinsulate our house. We already had double paned windows and had installed a fireplace insert and a free standing wood stove in our kitchen. We extra insulated the crawl space and the attic. Now we found that we could heat the 4000 sq. ft house with the free standing wood stove just by leaving doors open so that the heat would flow. When temps dropped below freezing, we lit an additional fire in the fireplace insert. Worked like a charm.
Everybody was doing this and suddenly the utility was screaming that they were not selling enough electricity and they needed a rate increase. (Almost everybody had electric heat out there.) Just after we moved, the EPA came in and they imposed county wide regulations that prohibit wood burning for most people for much of the year.