GO AHEAD, GUESS WHAT MY ELECTRIC BILL WAS THIS MONTH???

Con Edison keeps talking about rising energy costs and how they'll have to pass that on to you, the customer. That means another rate hike. Con Ed already socked it's millions of New York area customers with a 22-percent rate increase in August. Last April, rates went up by 6-percent for a total of 28-percent in just four months.
I don't know about you, but my electric bills were already through the roof. And, what exactly do we get for for this: shoddy service, electrified street and sidewalk grates, brownouts and blackouts.



Con Ed was probably one of the last utilities in the country to install an interactive outage map on its website. Virtually every utility in the tri-state area has had one of these for years. Remember when Con Edison said the only way they'd know if your power was out, was if you call. Well, the technology has long existed to track outages. It wasn't until I raised the question at WABC and grilled executives how they couldn't install something that just about every other electric company was already using



Con Edison is also famous for simply doing patch work to get customers back on line. They had rarely looked at a permanent solution to their decaying infrastructure. They say they're spending tens of millions of dollars to make permanent repairs on problems that previously had only been fixed with electrical tape! If this is the case, fine. Take my money. But, next time entire neighborhoods lose power after promises from executives that they're prepared for anything, customers will likely raise living hell.



To give you an idea of what it's costing to cool and electrify a 1200 square foot parlor level apartment in a Brooklyn Brownstone, check out my electric bill history.
It's downright outrageous.






From Date To Date Elec Use Total Bill Amt


7/09/2008 08/07/2008 1,364 0.00 $386.60 -- --
06/09/2008 07/09/2008 1,453 0.00 $370.03 -- --
05/08/2008 06/09/2008 972 0.00 $227.20 -- --
04/09/2008 05/08/2008 502 0.00 $121.28 -- --
03/11/2008 04/09/2008 554 0.00 $122.98 -- --
02/08/2008 03/11/2008 612 0.00 $141.69 -- --
01/09/2008 02/08/2008 590 0.00 $144.73 -- --
12/10/2007 01/09/2008 594 0.00 $127.42 -- --
11/06/2007 12/10/2007 311 0.00 $74.45 -- --
10/09/2007 11/06/2007 885 0.00 $185.01 -- --
09/07/2007 10/09/2007 850 0.00 $174.47 -- --
08/08/2007 09/07/2007 1,110 0.00 $223.37 -- --
07/10/2007 08/08/2007 1,049 0.00 $253.23 -- --
06/08/2007 07/10/2007 1,796 0.00 $442.07 -- --
05/09/2007 06/08/2007 900 0.00 $214.21 -- --
04/10/2007 05/09/2007 422 0.00 $94.89 -- --
03/12/2007 04/10/2007 563 0.00 $124.36 -- --
02/08/2007 03/12/2007 621 0.00 $117.93 -- --
01/09/2007 02/08/2007 500 0.00 $106.26 -- --
12/08/2006 01/09/2007 565 0.00 $117.22 -- --

You'd think I lived in the entire 6,000 square foot building and not just one floor, with a monthly bill of $390.00. I'm thinking about exploring the possibility of installing a giant windmill in my backyard to keep the air conditioners running in summer.




Really, I am!