BOHICA: Duke Progress says this SHOULDN’T hurt TOOOOOOO MUCH.
You folks probably remember we had a BIG power outage around these parts in early December. It 
was chaos. Nothing that required electrical power worked for nearly a week.
I used NO electricity for about five days. Yet, when I got billed for the period that included the big blackout, my bill was substantially higher than it had been in periods where there were NO five-day blackouts. I paid more for 25 days of electricity than I had been paying for 30 days of electricity.
It’s not like we can tell Duke to take its heavy-handed tactics and poor customer service and shove 
them where the sun doesn’t shine. They have a state-blessed monopoly on electrical service for most of North Carolina.
In exchange for this monopoly, Duke has to answer to the North Carolina Utilities Commission – staffed by politicos appointed by the same Raleigh politicians who month-in-and-month-out, year-in-and-year-out get their pockets generously lined with cash from Duke Progress lobbyists.
It’s a big game — fun for all in Raleigh — but we get stuck with the bill for said “fun.”
Well, you may have heard that Duke Progress is seeking a rate hike. The Utilities Commission sent out a mailing that looks kind of like THIS to Duke Progress customers across the state. The Commission is seeking public comment on the request for a rate hike. They’ve got some hearings scheduled for around the state:
It’s also interesting to see the stated reasons behind the proposed rate hike:
Duke is in love with wind and solar power and all of those other socialist fantasies. They’ve also been subjected to green energy mandates foisted upon them by a lot of bought-and-paid-for folks on Jones Street. Again, more fun for the Raleigh political class at our expense. They have fun enacting their fantasies, while our screws get turned a lot tighter.
“More reliable” renewable technology? Coal works well for us on days that are overcast or without much wind. Solar panels and wind farms wouldn’t have done us a damn bit of good during December’s BIG blackout.
Environmental wackoism will make it prohibitive for most people to afford cars. It will knock up the cost of so many things we take for granted in life. Outrageously expensive “alternative energy” will likely produce scenarios where choices have to be made between (A)school clothes for the kiddies and health insurance, and (B) heating, cooling, and powering the house.
Duke / Progress Energy is a very woke corporation, all into ESG, which is why they are trying to force this green energy nonsense on their captive customers. This evil monopoly badly needs to be busted up.
The “green energy” boondoggle raises customer electric rates everywhere it has been imposed. Merkel pushed it in Germany and as a result, even prior to the Ukraine War, German residential electric rates were already over three times what North Carolinians were paying. Within a year of the EU adopting its “Green Deal”, European countries were seeing regular double digit electric rates, often in the 30% range. As Poland’s prime minister told his people, this was the result of the “extreme climate policies of the EU”. Spain’s deputy prime minister complained to the EU that the skyrocketing electric rates could lead to open rebellion against her government. When Labour came to power in the state of South Australia, they pledged to make it a “green energy superpower”. When they started, South Australia had the lowest residential electric rates in the world, but after they finished blowing up all the coal power plants and installing lots of wind and solar, they had the highest residential electric rates in the world, plus regular rolling blackouts.
What should be an outrage to all Republicans is that the pathetic special interest prostitutes we have as “legislative leaders”, Phil Berger and Tim Moore, are who rammed this boondoggle down the throats of North Carolina electric ratepayers. Berger and Moore were Duke’s spear carriers against the interests of the people of North Carolina. I hope that twit Tim Moore does run for Congress as I would like to see him held accountable for this and the other outrageous special interest favors he has done against Republican principles.
North Carolina electric ratepayers will suffer badly in the pocketbook due to Phil Berger and Tim Moore selling us out to the special interests. Why is it again that we should be electing a Republican legislative majority with these two clowns running the circus?
I couldn’t agree more. And this is not the only betrayal to the people these rinos have done.
NC Duke customers are paying 18% more per kWh for electricity than SC Duke customers. Why? Because our idiot legislature refuses to kill the RPS that forces us to pay for the wildly expensive, unreliable, intermittent power from solar farms. Follow the money.
And whose fault is that? The RINOs who prostitute themselves to woke Duke Energy like Phil Berger, Tim Moore, Jim Perry, and John Szoka. They have screwed the NC utility customers and it is just going to get worse with HB951. This is idiot Angela Merkel’s “Energiewende” all over again, and it is why Germans pay over three times as much for residential electric power as North Carolinians. Wind and solar is a boondoggle but it helps ESG obsessed woke companies liek Duke “virtue signal” to the far left at our expense. Those RINOs are worse than Democrats.
Reaganite, you are DAMN RIGHT that the RINOs are WORSE than dimocrats.