J. TODD FOSTER: Plenty Of Pain To Go Around With Recent Power Bills

By: J. todd Foster | TriCities.com
Published: January 11, 2009

Judging by my latest utility bill, my home must be warm and toasty, right? Three hundred and seventy-eight dollars is a dubious milestone in my household’s history of energy usage.
So why is my living room cold enough to hang meat?

I suppose I could spend this entire column taking cheap shots at Bristol Virginia Utilities. But I’m not going to do that; it would be the easy route – kind of like continuing to bombard the perennial dodge ball victim at your elementary school.

I would be interested to know, however, why my utility bill is skyrocketing at a time when my thermostat is plummeting?

First a little personal background. I love cold temperatures. When I was 6 years old, I fell in love with the Minnesota Vikings. All my friends figured I must have been born in Minnesota. (The real reason was my love for the color purple.) And when I was a young teenager, my parents snapped a photo of me taking out the trash in my bare feet.

Why was that a Kodak moment? Because there was 2 inches of snow on the driveway at the time.

My point is this: I like it cold. Here we are three measurable snowfalls into the dead of winter and I have yet to put on a coat.

Not even a windbreaker. Not a single time. The closest I’ve come is a hooded sweatshirt to go sledding with my boys.

Strangers have approached me in public and questioned my lack of winter apparel as if I were mentally deficient (maybe, but it has nothing to do with the weather) or unable to afford a trip to the Burlington Coat Factory (the recession is bad but not that bad, and I actually own several nice coats). I give them my standard response: If you ever see me in a coat, you better stay indoors because it’s Antarctica cold.

So imagine my recent surprise when I was forced to begin donning a wool blanket just to watch television in my family room. That surprise was heightened when the utility bill arrived.

My wife shrieked and immediately padded toward the thermostat. “We’re turning this down,” she said.

I informed her that I didn’t think the thermostat could go below the 58 degrees at which it was set and that this wasn’t a kilowatt issue anyway, in my humble, layman’s opinion – despite what all the area utilities are saying. This has something to do with fuel surcharges and fuel-cost adjustments and finger-pointing between BVU and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

For some reason, fuel cost adjustments – which cover what it costs a utility to buy coal or electricity – are going up at a time when some fuel costs (gasoline) are less than half of what they were a few months ago. Everything seems to be inversely proportional: Fuel surcharges go up while fuel costs drop; power bills go up while thermostats go down.

I’m not buying the power companies’ excuses. Yes the temperatures have turned cold. And people are spending more time indoors and using more electricity.

But in order for my utility bill to practically double, I’d have to be using 1,000-watt light bulbs, have a plasma TV I don’t know about and have the microwave on continuous run.

I can’t wait to see what next month’s power and water bills will be.

That’s because a few days ago we filled a bathtub to the rim with warm water so our boys could play scuba divers.

A real diving trip off the coast of Florida might have been cheaper.

J. Todd Foster is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at jfoster@bristolnews.com or (276) 645-2513.