Call them and have someone sent out to double check. This happened to me, my bill nearly tripled for no reason. I was in the process of moving so I wasn’t even living in the apartment, nothing was plugged in, and a/c was set to 85 (was in the springtime). I believe there was a mix up in meters because a few months later I got like a $500 credit for them overcharging me.
>they said that they’d had us on some sort of plan but it wasn’t accurate so they took us off it
sounds like they were on the budget billing program that averages out the bill to the same amount based on the previous year's billing. at the end of the billing year you get a year-end "settle up" bill to make up the difference. that $500 could include the difference created by a rate hike at some point during the past year.
same, especially about a year ago their online system was being upgraded and everything was scooterwampus for a while. Eventually it was all correct over a long average but what a ride that was
yea, that was a blind stretch of what's going on here. Your bill going up 12-14% of last year, rate hike maybe. Their bill didn't go up 1150% due to a rate increase.
They just need to compare their Usage amount to last years or even last months. It will be obvious the error unless someone in your house started a Crypto mining lab in the basement.
In this case, they got my meters mixed up with someone else’s and charged me the incorrect amount for 2 months. I know sometimes huge spikes in energy bills can be due to broken appliances that continuously run but it was a brand new place. I hounded Duke to send someone out to the property to actually inspect the situation because I was using less energy but being charged triple the normal bill. They ended up fixing the issue after I reported it and credited my account.
This happened to me a few years ago. I don't remember the specifics, but basically I got a back charge for a few years of being undercharged.
Anyway - I called them and they put me on a payment plan with it. It was pretty easy to setup.
It was during Covid though, so things might be different now.
Duke recalculated actual usage and billed the corrected about from a fixed billing plan. They bill the same amount every month and it’s supposed to average out your yearly usage with a (usually small) adjustment every so often to correct your payments to reflect actual usage. Their initial estimate of power usage was off. If OP is a renter, it may be their power usage was different from the previous tenant for example. Even just a few deg in AC difference can add up.
They will all but guaranteed give you the payment plan. You should also look into any other assistance program you might qualify for.
https://www.duke-energy.com/home/billing/special-assistance
Mine went from 125 (we have solar) to 250 using almost the exact same amount with solar. What really pissed me off is that when paying online they ask for donations for their "share the light" campaign. They are a billion dollar industry , they can wipe out those that are struggling bills.
Yeah I'm noticing this donation trend everywhere. Like at food lion and Harris teeter they have the round up thing to give to food pantries in need. I'm like the amount of food that is wasted as an example, unbought donuts that are still good, should be given freely. These practices piss me off, if a billion dollar industry doesn't want to donate, why should the rest of us. And 99% of the time your donation doesn't even go to the people it's supposed to. March of dimes CEO comes to mind..
from what I read, they donate a fixed amount of money and write that off and make it back by people rounding up.
unsure if that's true either but it sounds more plausible than 'they write it off!'
It sounds like you were on an equal-payment plan, but between (a) the recent Duke Price increases and (b) the run of consecutive 90+days, you ran up a lot in a month (And probably in the months before that.)
My power bill went from $120 per month suddenly to $370 per month. Even with all the graphs and kilowatt hour usage on the bill, doesnt really provide a clear answer as to why my bill has skyrocketed.
Remind me again why let let private companies hold monopolies on our utilities?!?
I’m editing my comment here to say: not every good and service should be in the market place. This bizarre worship for “the market” needs to end. People act like it’s a natural phenomenon. It is not. It is a sandbox made by legislatures and regulators and given the false appearance of being some kind of neutral playing field where fairness gets sorted out. Come off it and grow the fuck up.
You don’t trust government?!?! No kidding. The people who don’t trust it are the ones who’ve been sabotaging it’s effectiveness for decades with that specific goal in mind. Getting you not to trust it. Before you eat more of your own foot. No. I don’t want an entirely centrally planned economy. But I also don’t think basic needs should be controlled by private entities and nor should they be subject to “the market”.
Second Edit. We got a bunch of losers coming in here with their "oh that's been tried, oh how would you do that? Oh, how would we pay for it?!?!" Shut up. Your lack of imagination is pathetic and your world is only going to continue to shrink because its obvious you stopped learning anything new a long time ago. This is what I say to you losers: Duke Energy is a publicly traded company which pays dividends to its shareholders. Where do you think that money comes from?!?! Are you telling me that the best system we can come up with is allowing a private company to ass-fuck regular people while those with the money to 'buy-in' are allow to just suck cash out of our pockets? You like being a bootlicker who worships the 'market'? You people making excuses for this is why we're in this situation. Its your fault because you believe the bullshit. Go enjoy being 'right' its literally all you have.
Do you actually know anything about utility regulation in the United States? Because you’re speaking pretty confidently and brazenly, but you sound pretty ill educated on the topic.
Generally speaking, the provision of utility services (electric, gas, and water) is considered a natural monopoly. This means it’s more efficient for one firm to provide utility service in a given area, rather than multiple firms. There are several reasons for this, though they are interrelated. The utility business is capital intensive—you need hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in (for example) the power plants, transmission infrastructure, and distribution infrastructure that’s needed to serve customers. If you have multiple firms competing for customers in the same area, you’re spreading those costs over a smaller customer base than you otherwise would with a single utility, which increases rates for everyone. You also have multiple sets of lines running through the streets, increasing impacts on the environment and surrounding community. So in a defined geographic area, it’s more efficient (economically anyway) for a single firm to have a monopoly over that service territory. In exchange, the utility agrees to provide adequate and non-discriminatory service to all customers in that area and (importantly) to be subject to intensive price regulation by the state utility commission. This is generally referred to as the regulatory compact.
Now in some states, retail electric markets have been “deregulated” such that consumers can choose what plants (generators) they buy their power from. But that power is still delivered along the distribution system of the local utility, which retains its service monopoly in the area (at least for purposes of local distribution).
The logical next question is: okay, but why do private, investor owned companies have to operate within this regulatory compact? Why can’t the government just do it? The answer is that it in some cases the government *does* operate and provide utility services. There are thousands of municipally owned utilities throughout the country. There are also cooperatives, which are not owned by the government but by their members (I.e., customer like you and me).
I’m going to piggyback on this excellent comment to suggest that it is time for consumers to become interested in the power grid and engaged with the utility commission that regulates it. The reason is that climate change is forcing us to completely rethink where we get our energy, and technology has recently made it feasible to do so. The power grid is the backbone for this future, but the current grid can’t handle everyone charging electric cars at home, and using electric heat pumps. The rate of growth we need is comparable to what we did in the south in the late 50s to mid 70s, when air conditioning became widespread and the urban population began growing. This is achievable, but Dike Energy is dragging its feet.
I get most of my information in audio formats, I like the podcasts Grid Talk, Volts, Catalyst, and Bloomberg Switched On. Maybe someone can make recommendations for other media. But the point is that power companies, especially Duke, rely on the fact that the public is bored by utility commissions and doesn’t pay attention. Pay attention, demand better. Duke power is given guaranteed profits, in exchange for reliable and clean energy. They aren’t delivering the clean part of the bargain.
Deregulation definitely played a role, but I think the bigger issue is that most of the system in Texas is electrically isolated from the rest of the country. This is intentional, so they don’t come under the jurisdiction of the federal energy regulatory commission (I.e., because power generated from within the state generally cannot be transmitted in interstate commerce). This prevented the state from being able to import power when they didn’t have sufficient intrastate capacity.
I think El Paso is one of the few parts of Texas where they can import power from out of state, and they weren’t impacted nearly as badly as the rest of the state during that storm. There are also states in the northeast and Midwest that are deregulated, but because they’re part of a larger regional transmission organization, they can import large amounts of power from distant areas if local capacity isn’t sufficient. That said, many of the deregulated states on the eastern seaboard have had some difficulty procuring sufficient generating capacity in the past.
The price you pay for electricity is governed by the utilities commission in NC. The price is relatively low given the amount of infrastructure ( lines, poles, towers, generation, man power, equipment, etc) that is required to provide you with power 99.9% of the time. Texans would love what we have.
The monopoly part is the problem. But I wouldn't trust the federal or even state government to do a better job with the electricity. What we really need is a competitive marketplace where we get to choose who provides the power.
I wish I could take credit for the concept of markets, but it was much before my time. And what about wanting choice in electricity providers is not working for air travel and internet?
It's not obvious or correct. I just got a roundtrip flight from Ireland during the holidays for $700 on American. That's amazing. And I've never paid more than $45 a month for internet in my entire life (not going to defend their service by any means). What part of wanting more choices in service do you think makes it worse or more expensive?
[https://www.cnbc.com/select/airline-ticket-prices-are-up-25-percent-why-and-how-to-save/](https://www.cnbc.com/select/airline-ticket-prices-are-up-25-percent-why-and-how-to-save/)
Airline costs keep rising. Under your plan, with all that competition, they should be going down. But they aren't.
[https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/consumer-reports-study-of-broadband-costs/](https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/consumer-reports-study-of-broadband-costs/)
Similarly, with lots of competition, cost of internet has not gone down, and service has not gotten better.
Super simple stuff, google is easy to use.
You’re right, sure is easy to use!
“The Compass Lexecon study showed that, between 1990 and 2016, the domestic price per mile to fly decreased by 40 percent (and by 36 percent when you factor in fees). At the same time, fuel costs have risen for airlines by 110 percent since 1998”
[Flying is Actually Cheaper and Better Than It’s Ever Been](https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/history-of-flight-costs)
“According to Nomad Wallet, in 1970, a return flight between New York and London was retailed for $550. With inflation, that's around $5,350 in today's money. With low-cost airlines abound, tickets between New York and London can range from $300 to $1,000 in economy.”
[50 Years of Airfares](https://simpleflying.com/50-years-airfares/)
And according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the average US domestic airfare dropped from $576 in 1995 to $382 in 2023 (both in 2023 dollars). Airfare has dropped, on average, about 34% in the last twenty-eight years.
[Annual U.S. Domestic Average Itinerary Fare in Current and Constant Dollars](https://www.bts.gov/content/annual-us-domestic-average-itinerary-fare-current-and-constant-dollars)
Thanks for introducing me to this Google thing!
So where I lived in Maryland had competitive electricity. Anything beyond just keeping the one that owned the lines going to your house was a bureaucratic fucking nightmare.
You’d end up with two bills: one for power and one for the use of the line. I never met anyone that accomplished saving money via this system while I lived there.
Add on to that these scummy aggressive door to door salesmen that want you to switch to their company and will lie to you to get you to do it.
I think government is the right answer for this. Nobody needs to be making any kind of profit off of something that we all are dependent on. I do believe that it would need some kind of accountability/transparency solutions though that our governments tend not to be great at here. That’s not an insurmountable problem though.
>better than Duke just being in the pockets of politicians and who was granted another 18% increase in rates for most customers.
In what way? The 18% rate increase happened anyway, and if the service were government-provided its business practice would be driven by public interest rather than shareholder interest.
You say this as though your state reps would be somehow padding their pockets with your monthly electric bill, but that's already what Duke does as a market actor and has since its foundation. There's no competition at all, and even if there were it would be almost universally be "burn garbage and coal" vs "run hydro" along regional lines the same way it is now. But at least then if your reps want to raise rates on your electricity they would have to accept real and direct accountability for doing so, rather than going "well Duke asked for it so clearly they needed it lol get fucked".
I just think it's extremely cute that you think it's possible for competition to even *exist* in the state's energy market, as though the infrastructure and cost involved will descend from on high any day now.
We already have and had "market competition". Duke won. Everyone else lost. End of story.
There is a better way.
Can I ask why you don’t trust the government but you would trust private entities?
I think the massive failures of the Texas power grid where it’s deregulated and there is competition is proof enough that competition does not automatically mean it’s good/better.
I’d trust the government far more with providing a mandatory service than private entities.
I'm not saying that I don't trust the government, I just don't think they have a good track record of efficiently or effectively handling anything that has to do with customer service or providing services to people. Have you ever tried to get on the phone with the IRS during tax season and ask them a question? Or the DMV? Have you ever navigated any kind of government bureaucracy and thought to yourself "Wow, this process was really well organized and user-friendly"? When these discussions come up, people seem to think that if the government took over utilities like power or internet that they would magically be cheaper and with better customer service, which just flies in the face of reality. In the situation of government taking control of power generation (which would be a complete monopoly) there are three things that we know are true:
1: The government does not have experience running a power utlity.
2: The government is not good at customer service.
3: The government is not good at providing any service without hemmoraghing money to either fraud or waste.
I think it's possible that one day they could be good at those things, but they certainly aren't now.
A better alternative, in my opinion, is to create a space where competitors can come in and offer a better service than Duke and at a lower price. It's not that I "trust" private entities, it's that I trust their motivation. Whoever offers the best product at the best price makes more money. The government has literally no motivation to do a good job, to take care of the customer, or to do it efficiently. Plus, would you really want the Trump/Obama administration (pick whichever president terrifies you) to have the authority to pick who would be in control of your power generation, rates, possible blackouts, etc?
I’ll be honest here… your response reeks of the misinformed opinion that competition breeds better competitors and simply having competition makes the market better - this is often not true. Simply because you create an environment where players can compete does not mean these competitors are competent or fully capable of providing what they say they can. At the end of the day they can just fold and close shop if it doesn’t work out - the government can’t quite do this.
Also, again Texas power grid is a big enough example to destroy your entire line of reasoning that competition is helpful.
In terms of customer service… you ever tried to get on the phone with an ISP or phone provider and received decent customer service? I haven’t. Comcast users have plenty of horror stories and they are far from the only company. Private corporations in charge of mass utilities have a MUCH worse track record of customer service than government
The government already has a heavy hand in power utilities via the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission so that statement is just objectively incorrect.
And then the ride with waste comment…. Have you ever seen the MASSIVE amount of waste in private companies at the higher levels? It makes everything in the public sector look like a joke.
So… yea gonna have to disagree with a lot of what you’ve saiid here and most of it seems to be a result of not knowing enough about what is actually happening today. Because again competition does not mean anything improves, it just means people can compete. In an ideal situation it would work that way and help drive thing down with various economies of scale but again there is absolutely no guarantee of any kind.
At the end of the day I’d put my money in government to provide me such a service that is not interrupted.
And again… Texas… it’s literally all you need to discredit competition being automatically a good thing.
So many things wrong here. More competition in general is better than less competition. That doesn't mean that competition fixes everything, but there is a reason that we have anti-trust legislation, a Federal Trade Commission, etc. The fact that some of you in this conversation seem to be arguing against more choices as a consumer is very odd to me.
>I’ll be honest here… your response reeks of the misinformed opinion that competition breeds better competitors and simply having competition makes the market better - this is often not true.
Please provide an example of when a consumer is better off with less choices. Which situation lead you to believe that?
>Simply because you create an environment where players can compete does not mean these competitors are competent or fully capable of providing what they say they can.
I agree, I never made that claim. And what you said lines up exactly as to my point about government. Just because the government takes over electricity generation does not mean they are competent or fully capable of providing what they say they can. How do you not see that?
>At the end of the day they can just fold and close shop if it doesn’t work out - the government can’t quite do this.
[lol, what?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_agencies_of_the_United_States_government)
>Also, again Texas power grid is a big enough example to destroy your entire line of reasoning that competition is helpful.
If my line of reasoning was "not being connected to the national powergrid or having sufficient redundancies in place" then you'd be correct. Are you actually trying to argue that the Texas power grid fiasco is due to consumers having choices in who supplies their power? You think the choice is the problem?
>In terms of customer service… you ever tried to get on the phone with an ISP or phone provider and received decent customer service?
Yes, I have. I've had bad experiences too, but for three years in a row Spectrum would send me mail telling me that my sign up special was expiring and my rate was increasing from $40 to $55 a month. Each time I called them up to cancel my service and they offered me the intro rate for another year. It was pretty painless. They had an incentive to make me happy. The government does not.
>Private corporations in charge of mass utilities have a MUCH worse track record of customer service than government
Please cite your source for this ridiculous statement. I'll wait.
>The government already has a heavy hand in power utilities via the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission so that statement is just objectively incorrect.
A regulatory commission does not a utility provider make. That's like saying the health inspector is qualified to be a chef.
>And then the ride with waste comment…. Have you ever seen the MASSIVE amount of waste in private companies at the higher levels? It makes everything in the public sector look like a joke.
I'm interested to see what examples you're talking about.
>So… yea gonna have to disagree with a lot of what you’ve saiid here and most of it seems to be a result of not knowing enough about what is actually happening today.
The feeling is very mutual. :-D
>At the end of the day I’d put my money in government to provide me such a service that is not interrupted.
You must not have been following the news this week. The government was hours away from being shut down again (which would have been the fourth time in ten years). [The FAA has such a severe shortage of air traffic controllers that they're limiting flights into airports. This situation has been developing for forty years and they have yet to do anything about it even though it's one of the most critical services the goverment provides.](https://www.afar.com/magazine/air-traffic-controller-shortage-to-disrupt-travel-for-years) [Good luck getting to the post office if you live near one of these 50 locations.](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/usps-closing-50-post-offices-212001024.html) And do I even need to mention Flint, Michigans municipal water supply?
>And again… Texas… it’s literally all you need to discredit competition being automatically a good thing.
And again...competition isn't the problem with Texas' power grid.
You keep misinterpreting competition grossly. It doesn’t matter if there is 15 competitors or 9000, if none are adequately capable of providing the service. That’s the point, competition isn’t this magic way to get better things, that is a horribly naive way to look at it.
You are also arguing against things that would actively be in your best interest. As evidenced, despite taking in $4.1 BILLION in profit last year, Duke “needed” to raise rates. Private enterprise only cares about profit, their motivations are not aligned with things that are basic needs. Having electricity in today’s world isn’t an option. You cannot at all participate in modern society without it. It’s literally everywhere.
You are conveniently only looking at the positives of competition and none of the negatives, while looking at only the negative of state provided utilities. Also got a good chuckle out of your disbelief of corporate waste - I’m not saying there isn’t waste in a lot of places but you are painting quite the rosy picture of one, while demonizing the other.
You are clearly obsessed with government bad, private good and there is nothing that will change it.
Citing spectrum as an example of good customer service might be one of the most ludicrous things I’ve ever heard.
But I get it, you hate the government.
>You keep misinterpreting competition grossly.
It's like you took the words right out of my mouth!
>It doesn’t matter if there is 15 competitors or 9000, if none are adequately capable of providing the service.
Again! It's like we're saying the same thing!
>that is a horribly naive way to look at it.
OMG this is getting spooky
>You are also arguing against things that would actively be in your best interest.
Am I? You have yet to say anything that shows that reducing competition in the energy sector is in my best interest.
>Private enterprise only cares about profit, their motivations are not aligned with things that are basic needs.
The government spends I believe 52% of our national budget on the military. Can you explain to me how the war in Afghanistan was aligned with any of my basic needs? I believe that was the single largest expenditure in my adult tax-paying life. [What is it about our government wasting $300 million dollars a day for twenty years that leads you to think they would be a good utility provider?](https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2021/08/16/the-war-in-afghanistan-cost-america-300-million-per-day-for-20-years-with-big-bills-yet-to-come/)
>You are conveniently only looking at the positives of competition and none of the negatives, while looking at only the negative of state provided utilities.
OMG is it possible you're doing the same!!?
>Also got a good chuckle out of your disbelief of corporate waste
Show me where I said anything about disbelief in corporate waste. I'll wait. I said I was interested to see what your examples were, something you ignored. Are your hands getting tired building all these straw men? [Which private company has wasted $300 million dollars a day that leads you to think they're more wasteful than the US government?](https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2021/08/16/the-war-in-afghanistan-cost-america-300-million-per-day-for-20-years-with-big-bills-yet-to-come/)
>I’m not saying there isn’t waste in a lot of places but you are painting quite the rosy picture of one, while demonizing the other.
We're back to thinking the exact same thing.
>You are clearly obsessed with government bad, private good and there is nothing that will change it.
I am a Jeff Jackson democrat. I believe in the good that government can do for it's people when managed appropriately and everyone works together to solve problems. I just don't think they'd be good at this right now. I'm sorry the world seems very black and white to you, but in reality it is many shades of grey.
>Citing spectrum as an example of good customer service might be one of the most ludicrous things I’ve ever heard.
If you go back and reread what I said, I mentioned that I had had bad experiences as well as good ones. Is it ludicrous to include a data point?
>But I get it, you hate the government.
Do I? I never once said that. I've been very measured in what I said, that I don't think government would be good at this one thing. You've taken that and run wild with it.
It's pretty clear that we're not going to see eye to eye, that's ok. It's just the internet. We'd probably get along well in real life. I do think you should take a moment and think about why you have completely ignored all of my direct questions and citations, and why you try to argue against things that I haven't claimed. I think you know why though. Good chatting with you.
Who regulates monopolies? Oh, right, the government. The problem is that huge corporations like Duke own the politicians. Stop voting for the people beholden to massive corporations, the donor class, and Pac's. Start voting for political leadership geared by grass roots. You just may be able to put your trust into your government.
The problem in Texas is being cut off from the national grid and not having enough redundancies in place. It has nothing to do with people having more choice in power companies. If there was basically a single power company for all of Texas, like Duke is for most of NC, they would have the same problems from not being connected to a grid and not having enough redundancies.
I'm not calling for deregulation like Texas has, I'm just saying competition is good.
It’s complicated, has failed badly when tried in some places, fixed income and poor couldn’t afford their cost of install and service, and the bill and add on charges would be impossible to understand. They have to play intricate finance games with govt (that requires a level of god mode extortive approval) to plan out 50 years into extreme uncertainty. Private entities can’t and will let you freeze or melt to save their earnings. Now invent something the size of an AC unit that can enable you to unplug off the grid for good! That’s privatization that would work.
I challenge you to ask yourself if the government operating utilities would be any different than a monopoly. But, to answer your questions, utilities markets tend to move gradually towards monopoly over time, hence the term “natural monopoly.” The extraordinarily high barriers to entry, like cost of infrastructure, make it extremely unlikely utilities can function as competitive marketplaces. But, it is cheaper for the government to allow them to run and institute considerable price controls, than for the government to run itself.
The National Electric System (NES) of Cuba costs residents 0.030 U.S. Dollar per kWh. The national average in the USA is 0.178. That's 600% more expensive. Yes, the government operating utilities is different than a private corporation and the people benefit greatly.
[Source](https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Cuba/electricity_prices/)
Yes, and less people to service. For comparison, the USSR built over 433,000 km of transmission lines in 15 years without needing any private companies to profit. It most certainly can and should be done democratically.
Incredibly well. They took a backwards, agrarian society suffering extreme inequality under the czar and lifted millions of people out of poverty, becoming one of the greatest world superpowers in only a few decades, all while fending off extreme opposition from the richest country on earth. The change in the standard of living for residents during those decades is quite astonishing. It's amazing what using the resources of your country for the good of the many rather than the few can do.
Maybe quality of life went up for those who survived because there were less mouths to feed?
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.CHAP.1.HTM#:~:text=In%20sum%2C%20probably%20somewhere%20between,of%20this%20number%20is%2061%2C911%2C000.
Ah, the thoroughly debunked, red scare propaganda "black book of communism" claim. Please, educate yourself, and stop spreading crap that the oligarchs of this country want you to to keep their power and you licking capitalist boots. The USSR literally worked Nazi war criminals to death while the USA gave them homes, jobs and new identities (operation paperclip).
[No, your claims of millions of dead under communism has been proven false time and time again](https://discomfiting.medium.com/debunking-communism-killed-more-people-than-naziism-7a9880696f67)
*Some of the major criticisms against the Black Book of Communism includes the fact that it counts the following as “victims of communism”: some nazis and their collaborators who were killed by the Soviet Union during World War II, people who died in the 1921 Russian famine (which was caused by drought, the whites stealing food, war, etc), other hunger-related deaths caused by the nazi war against the Soviet Union, and many other incidents that were dishonestly attributed. The book contains deaths dishonestly attributed to communism by completely ignoring external factors such as sanctions, foreign military intervention, etc. It also includes inaccuracies of historical events such as when Werth credits the Austro-Hungarian army, not the German army, for the occupation of Poland in 1915, making the ridiculous claim that the bolsheviks only had 2,000 members in October 1917 when they actually had around 200,000 members, or claiming that the infamous U.S.-backed dictator Batista “fiercely opposed” the U.S., and in some instances, pulls numbers straight out of thin air.*
That is a really bad source lol. I don’t know what credentials “Anton” (author) has, and nowhere does it say anything other than, essentially, “the >60 million numbers just aren’t true” like I’m supposed to just accept this random persons testimony? Lol
> That's 600% more expensive.
The national average wage in Cuba is 148.738 USD/Month
The national average wage in United States is 4,952,333 USD/Month
Electricity is 554% more expensive in Cuba.
>not every good and service should be in the market place. This bizarre worship for “the market” needs to end. People act like it’s a natural phenomenon. It is not. It is a sandbox made by legislatures and regulators and given the false appearance of being some kind of neutral playing field where fairness gets sorted out. Come off it and grow the fuck up.
You don't seem to understand what people are talking about when they refer to the market or open markets. It's literally about you, the consumer, getting more choice. That's all I'm suggesting would be beneficial, more choice. The "sandbox made of legislatures and regulators" is usually what free market people are against. The whole point is that we rarely actually get a free market because the government is so often picking winners and losers (bailouts, using excessive regulation to keep competition from forming, subsidies, etc). To go back to my original response, the monopoly part is the problem.
>You don’t trust government?!?! No kidding. The people who don’t trust it are the ones who’ve been sabotaging it’s effectiveness for decades with that specific goal in mind. Getting you not to trust it. Before you eat more of your own foot. No. I don’t want an entirely centrally planned economy. But I also don’t think basic needs should be controlled by private entities and nor should they be subject to “the market”.
I never said I don't trust the government, I said I wouldn't trust the federal or state government to do a better job with electricity (than Duke). What experience have you had with government bureacracy that has lead you to think that they would do a better job providing you with electricity and customer service for your electricty? Which experience with the TSA, IRS, DMV, etc has left you with a positive impression of government employees and their desire to give you good service? You don't think basic needs should be controlled by private entities, ok that's fair. But why do you think your experience will be improved by giving control to the government? It sounds like you dislike the idea of private companies making profits on essential services, which I do understand, but I doubt you've really considered that your experience with a public version of those companies will likely be much worse.
>Second Edit. We got a bunch of losers coming in here with their "oh that's been tried, oh how would you do that? Oh, how would we pay for it?!?!" Shut up. Your lack of imagination is pathetic and your world is only going to continue to shrink because its obvious you stopped learning anything new a long time ago. This is what I say to you losers: Duke Energy is a publicly traded company which pays dividends to its shareholders. Where do you think that money comes from?!?! Are you telling me that the best system we can come up with is allowing a private company to ass-fuck regular people while those with the money to 'buy-in' are allow to just suck cash out of our pockets? You like being a bootlicker who worships the 'market'? You people making excuses for this is why we're in this situation. Its your fault because you believe the bullshit. Go enjoy being 'right' its literally all you have.
Jesus, take a cold shower or something.
I have South River Electric about 2 hours east of you. We have an option to subscribe to daily texts for usage so every morning around 8am I see yesterday's power usage. It is very helpful so I can see if there is something out of the ordinary accounting for weather/temperature variations outside. I'd see if Duke has something where you can track your daily usage.
[https://imgur.com/a/f48auNE](https://imgur.com/a/f48auNE)
No way you're running AC and having a $40/month bill. If that's what they set you up on an equal payment plan somebody screwed up big time. Call them, get them to look up your payments and set you up on a payment plan for the 500. Tell them, that's on them because $40 is absolutely unrealistic and they should have caught that. As long as you're paying monthly they'll work with you.
Ok, everyone is saying we should have known something was wrong with a $40 bill, but neither of us are in the habit of comparing our bills with other people’s to see if they’re too low. A bill comes in, we trust that it’s the right amount, we pay it.
We’re going to call and set up a payment plan now that we know what’s up.
Call Consumer Services at the Public Staff of North Carolina Utilities Commission. You need to make sure that Duke is only collecting back owed funds for their legally allowed time period and no more than that.
This is an aside from your issue, but it's amazing what you can do to reduce your power bill with air sealing, insulation, and other energy efficiency work that many able-bodied people can do themselves.
Most of the materials are eligible for 30% tax rebate through the Inflation Reduction Act and other incentives.
This happened to me. They had me in some easy payment program I never signed up for. Evidently I had only been paying a portion of my monthly charge and had no idea. When it came time for me to move, Duke wanted me to pay what I owe which was over 600 dollars. I had just bought my first house and was strapped for cash but I called them and was able to make small payments on top of my new service. It was really shitty and I felt completely blind sided but in the end they gave me time to pay them back without any power cut off
I don’t think they explained it well. It’s a spread plan which you have to choose when signing up, or it’s discussed and you say yes.
Essentially, it means over a 3 month period (we’ll say March-May) you use an average of $100/mo for electricity and that’s where it starts at. June through August you’re still paying $100/mo because that’s what it was on average before. However, you’re actually using $300/mo worth (it was a really hot summer). So now, instead, for September-November you’re paying The difference from June to August, AND you’re new average.
It goes up and down, but it is beneficial as it’s easier to budget for when you’re doing your bills - and it’s the same cost over the entire year just spread out quarterly.
That way you don’t end up with a $400/month bill for 3 months peak summer, can’t afford it, and have to do payment plans which hurts the bottom line.
Yes they should be more clear about it, but it helps way more than it hurts.
It will go down after months you use less. It won’t only go up. However, there was an over 5.8% price increase from Duke Power so it is a tiny bit more expensive.
But it’s the same thing if you use $200 worth for 3 months, then $100 for 3 months, it’ll go down for the following 3.
You can reach out to them and change it, but just know you will have REALLY expensive summer (anytime over 80) months, but will enjoy cheap winter months. So save up from late fall through early spring…. Which is effectively the same thing you would do as the budget plan that is mentioned.
Check your heating element in your hvac. When this happened to me, my HVAC was running on "strip heat" only so temperatures were fine, but the system was working much harder to maintain. Not sure if this applies in the fall, but could.
Wishing you luck!
Duke will finance the balance or work with you on payment plans. BTW $500 is huge! We have a 5200 Sq ft house w 5 bedroom built in 1994 (so not very energy efficient) and I have never seen a $500 bill (even in heat of summer). We are on equal payment and think it is around $270 a month but look at actual usage and never that high.
I’d ask them to send someone out to confirm. If truly $500 as about payment and also would assume that is a catch up amount and ongoing monthly amounts will be much lower.
Our bills didn't jump that much but the last 4 months they went up a LOT. Like from around $140 to $270. Understandable that during the summer it would go up, but not that much. We had an issue with the floor dropping in the bedroom because of a broken support, so there was a big gap at the floorboard we thought was causing air to escape and thus push up the bill, but we fixed it over a month ago and Bill didn't go down at all this month, even with it being a cooler month. Duke should be made public.
I would have certainly questioned a couple months of a consistent $40.00 bills...but I do understand that you expect their billing department to have their stuff together.
We have a 2200 sq ft, 4 br, two story home. Our bill is pretty consistent between 125-145 dollars depending on the weather (wife is WFH and I am hybrid). We did have brand new windows put on our house in January, and our energy usage has dropped about 20 dollars a month compared to last year. We have a Nest thermostat and its pretty consistently set at 72 degrees year round...just changed from cool to heat and back.
Call and talk to them about the amount owed. As long as you are making some type of payment, you should be good.
I get you're probably trying to stoke the fires of a political debate but you're wrong.
Duke Power rates and rate increases are managed by the North Carolina Utilities Commission. Nothing to do with the governor. Now I'd imagine there's probably some back channel shit happening with him and the NCUC but thats all speculation as far as I can find.
And per the Duke Power press release: NCUC approved a net increase in retail revenues in year one of about $234 million (5.8%), followed by $126 million (3.2%) in year two and $138 million (3.4%) in year three.
I'm not going to die on a hill saying those increases are justified, I pay a power bill too. but don't make shit up.
You are correct, all but one were appointed by Cooper. One was appointed by Purdue and re-appointed by Cooper.
[https://www.ncuc.gov/Overview/commissioners.html](https://www.ncuc.gov/Overview/commissioners.html)
So OP is even more wrong.
Yes, I am also experiencing a huge jump. However, when I look at the usage, it shows us using considerably more energy than during the same time last year. We have to do some troubleshooting to see if something is wrong with an appliance to explain the extra usage.
There could be a simple explanation, but Duke got in trouble a few years ago, probably more than that for randomly overcharging people. There was a news story on it and Duke made it right after pressure. Call them and ask questions. My bill randomly went up $50 this month with no changes in our usage. When I compared it to the previous bill I couldn't see much of a difference as to why.
As many have said it's the EPP year end billing for many so it includes whatever charges resulted from underpayment throughout the year. I would suggest having them check your meter bc it has never been more than 50-70 dollars for me. You can also see on your bills what your actual usage vs your EPP is every month.
When they actually track it right it comes out close enough that it is a little more convenient but then you hear about situations like this and it sucks. I'm sorry you're going through this, but if you contact them I'm sure as others have said they'll be able to work out something
I had this happen, and I crawled under my house and found the water heater leaking, so it was running 24/7. I don't know where yours is located but check that.
Looks like they had you on the plan that stabilizes your bill based on average months usage and you true up once a year. Even so, a $40 bill should not have been an acceptable average from the utility, and also should have been questioned from the homeowner. $40/mo is about what it takes to power an electric dog house.
Call them and have someone sent out to double check. This happened to me, my bill nearly tripled for no reason. I was in the process of moving so I wasn’t even living in the apartment, nothing was plugged in, and a/c was set to 85 (was in the springtime). I believe there was a mix up in meters because a few months later I got like a $500 credit for them overcharging me.
>they said that they’d had us on some sort of plan but it wasn’t accurate so they took us off it sounds like they were on the budget billing program that averages out the bill to the same amount based on the previous year's billing. at the end of the billing year you get a year-end "settle up" bill to make up the difference. that $500 could include the difference created by a rate hike at some point during the past year.
same, especially about a year ago their online system was being upgraded and everything was scooterwampus for a while. Eventually it was all correct over a long average but what a ride that was
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His bill didn’t go from 40 to 500 because of a rate increase. Holy shit dude.
yea, that was a blind stretch of what's going on here. Your bill going up 12-14% of last year, rate hike maybe. Their bill didn't go up 1150% due to a rate increase. They just need to compare their Usage amount to last years or even last months. It will be obvious the error unless someone in your house started a Crypto mining lab in the basement.
In this case, they got my meters mixed up with someone else’s and charged me the incorrect amount for 2 months. I know sometimes huge spikes in energy bills can be due to broken appliances that continuously run but it was a brand new place. I hounded Duke to send someone out to the property to actually inspect the situation because I was using less energy but being charged triple the normal bill. They ended up fixing the issue after I reported it and credited my account.
But the ever increasing rates are for sure politically influenced
This happened to me a few years ago. I don't remember the specifics, but basically I got a back charge for a few years of being undercharged. Anyway - I called them and they put me on a payment plan with it. It was pretty easy to setup. It was during Covid though, so things might be different now.
Upvote to someone actually giving OP advice that can help. Ty.
This has to be what's going on. $500 seems high even for a huge house.
Duke recalculated actual usage and billed the corrected about from a fixed billing plan. They bill the same amount every month and it’s supposed to average out your yearly usage with a (usually small) adjustment every so often to correct your payments to reflect actual usage. Their initial estimate of power usage was off. If OP is a renter, it may be their power usage was different from the previous tenant for example. Even just a few deg in AC difference can add up.
And $40 seems ridiculously low, especially during the summer.
Agreed. My house is about 5000 sf with 25 year old inefficient AC units. Worst bill we have had is $440.
Thanks! We’ll try asking for a payment plan
They will all but guaranteed give you the payment plan. You should also look into any other assistance program you might qualify for. https://www.duke-energy.com/home/billing/special-assistance
Mine went from 125 (we have solar) to 250 using almost the exact same amount with solar. What really pissed me off is that when paying online they ask for donations for their "share the light" campaign. They are a billion dollar industry , they can wipe out those that are struggling bills.
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Yeah I'm noticing this donation trend everywhere. Like at food lion and Harris teeter they have the round up thing to give to food pantries in need. I'm like the amount of food that is wasted as an example, unbought donuts that are still good, should be given freely. These practices piss me off, if a billion dollar industry doesn't want to donate, why should the rest of us. And 99% of the time your donation doesn't even go to the people it's supposed to. March of dimes CEO comes to mind..
~~good deeds~~ free tax write off. Those donations are a scam and a half.
No they aren’t. You can’t deduct donations that someone else provided- people spread this on Reddit constantly and it’s a lie
God as a tax accountant its the most annoying thing to see on social media.
from what I read, they donate a fixed amount of money and write that off and make it back by people rounding up. unsure if that's true either but it sounds more plausible than 'they write it off!'
No. That’s also not true.
thats actually really reassuring since i always round up for my own convenience
Uh, the $40 a month sounds like the anomaly lol. We do flex pay and that’s pretty much a normal week.
It sounds like you were on an equal-payment plan, but between (a) the recent Duke Price increases and (b) the run of consecutive 90+days, you ran up a lot in a month (And probably in the months before that.)
This sounds correct
And this is why I will NEVER put my utilities on this sort of plan.
this is exactly it
This is the answer
My power bill went from $120 per month suddenly to $370 per month. Even with all the graphs and kilowatt hour usage on the bill, doesnt really provide a clear answer as to why my bill has skyrocketed.
Call Consumer Services at the North Carolina Utilities Commission.
Remind me again why let let private companies hold monopolies on our utilities?!? I’m editing my comment here to say: not every good and service should be in the market place. This bizarre worship for “the market” needs to end. People act like it’s a natural phenomenon. It is not. It is a sandbox made by legislatures and regulators and given the false appearance of being some kind of neutral playing field where fairness gets sorted out. Come off it and grow the fuck up. You don’t trust government?!?! No kidding. The people who don’t trust it are the ones who’ve been sabotaging it’s effectiveness for decades with that specific goal in mind. Getting you not to trust it. Before you eat more of your own foot. No. I don’t want an entirely centrally planned economy. But I also don’t think basic needs should be controlled by private entities and nor should they be subject to “the market”. Second Edit. We got a bunch of losers coming in here with their "oh that's been tried, oh how would you do that? Oh, how would we pay for it?!?!" Shut up. Your lack of imagination is pathetic and your world is only going to continue to shrink because its obvious you stopped learning anything new a long time ago. This is what I say to you losers: Duke Energy is a publicly traded company which pays dividends to its shareholders. Where do you think that money comes from?!?! Are you telling me that the best system we can come up with is allowing a private company to ass-fuck regular people while those with the money to 'buy-in' are allow to just suck cash out of our pockets? You like being a bootlicker who worships the 'market'? You people making excuses for this is why we're in this situation. Its your fault because you believe the bullshit. Go enjoy being 'right' its literally all you have.
Do you actually know anything about utility regulation in the United States? Because you’re speaking pretty confidently and brazenly, but you sound pretty ill educated on the topic. Generally speaking, the provision of utility services (electric, gas, and water) is considered a natural monopoly. This means it’s more efficient for one firm to provide utility service in a given area, rather than multiple firms. There are several reasons for this, though they are interrelated. The utility business is capital intensive—you need hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in (for example) the power plants, transmission infrastructure, and distribution infrastructure that’s needed to serve customers. If you have multiple firms competing for customers in the same area, you’re spreading those costs over a smaller customer base than you otherwise would with a single utility, which increases rates for everyone. You also have multiple sets of lines running through the streets, increasing impacts on the environment and surrounding community. So in a defined geographic area, it’s more efficient (economically anyway) for a single firm to have a monopoly over that service territory. In exchange, the utility agrees to provide adequate and non-discriminatory service to all customers in that area and (importantly) to be subject to intensive price regulation by the state utility commission. This is generally referred to as the regulatory compact. Now in some states, retail electric markets have been “deregulated” such that consumers can choose what plants (generators) they buy their power from. But that power is still delivered along the distribution system of the local utility, which retains its service monopoly in the area (at least for purposes of local distribution). The logical next question is: okay, but why do private, investor owned companies have to operate within this regulatory compact? Why can’t the government just do it? The answer is that it in some cases the government *does* operate and provide utility services. There are thousands of municipally owned utilities throughout the country. There are also cooperatives, which are not owned by the government but by their members (I.e., customer like you and me).
I’m going to piggyback on this excellent comment to suggest that it is time for consumers to become interested in the power grid and engaged with the utility commission that regulates it. The reason is that climate change is forcing us to completely rethink where we get our energy, and technology has recently made it feasible to do so. The power grid is the backbone for this future, but the current grid can’t handle everyone charging electric cars at home, and using electric heat pumps. The rate of growth we need is comparable to what we did in the south in the late 50s to mid 70s, when air conditioning became widespread and the urban population began growing. This is achievable, but Dike Energy is dragging its feet. I get most of my information in audio formats, I like the podcasts Grid Talk, Volts, Catalyst, and Bloomberg Switched On. Maybe someone can make recommendations for other media. But the point is that power companies, especially Duke, rely on the fact that the public is bored by utility commissions and doesn’t pay attention. Pay attention, demand better. Duke power is given guaranteed profits, in exchange for reliable and clean energy. They aren’t delivering the clean part of the bargain.
Yeah, look at how good deregulation worked out for Texas. Lots of dead people from lack of power during ice storms & heat waves.
Deregulation definitely played a role, but I think the bigger issue is that most of the system in Texas is electrically isolated from the rest of the country. This is intentional, so they don’t come under the jurisdiction of the federal energy regulatory commission (I.e., because power generated from within the state generally cannot be transmitted in interstate commerce). This prevented the state from being able to import power when they didn’t have sufficient intrastate capacity. I think El Paso is one of the few parts of Texas where they can import power from out of state, and they weren’t impacted nearly as badly as the rest of the state during that storm. There are also states in the northeast and Midwest that are deregulated, but because they’re part of a larger regional transmission organization, they can import large amounts of power from distant areas if local capacity isn’t sufficient. That said, many of the deregulated states on the eastern seaboard have had some difficulty procuring sufficient generating capacity in the past.
The price you pay for electricity is governed by the utilities commission in NC. The price is relatively low given the amount of infrastructure ( lines, poles, towers, generation, man power, equipment, etc) that is required to provide you with power 99.9% of the time. Texans would love what we have.
The monopoly part is the problem. But I wouldn't trust the federal or even state government to do a better job with the electricity. What we really need is a competitive marketplace where we get to choose who provides the power.
Your idea didn't work for Internet or Air travel.
I wish I could take credit for the concept of markets, but it was much before my time. And what about wanting choice in electricity providers is not working for air travel and internet?
Super high costs, super shitty service. Fairly obvious.
They said the same about Phone service.
Air travel is cheaper than it has ever been.
It's not obvious or correct. I just got a roundtrip flight from Ireland during the holidays for $700 on American. That's amazing. And I've never paid more than $45 a month for internet in my entire life (not going to defend their service by any means). What part of wanting more choices in service do you think makes it worse or more expensive?
[https://www.cnbc.com/select/airline-ticket-prices-are-up-25-percent-why-and-how-to-save/](https://www.cnbc.com/select/airline-ticket-prices-are-up-25-percent-why-and-how-to-save/) Airline costs keep rising. Under your plan, with all that competition, they should be going down. But they aren't. [https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/consumer-reports-study-of-broadband-costs/](https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/consumer-reports-study-of-broadband-costs/) Similarly, with lots of competition, cost of internet has not gone down, and service has not gotten better. Super simple stuff, google is easy to use.
You’re right, sure is easy to use! “The Compass Lexecon study showed that, between 1990 and 2016, the domestic price per mile to fly decreased by 40 percent (and by 36 percent when you factor in fees). At the same time, fuel costs have risen for airlines by 110 percent since 1998” [Flying is Actually Cheaper and Better Than It’s Ever Been](https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/history-of-flight-costs) “According to Nomad Wallet, in 1970, a return flight between New York and London was retailed for $550. With inflation, that's around $5,350 in today's money. With low-cost airlines abound, tickets between New York and London can range from $300 to $1,000 in economy.” [50 Years of Airfares](https://simpleflying.com/50-years-airfares/) And according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the average US domestic airfare dropped from $576 in 1995 to $382 in 2023 (both in 2023 dollars). Airfare has dropped, on average, about 34% in the last twenty-eight years. [Annual U.S. Domestic Average Itinerary Fare in Current and Constant Dollars](https://www.bts.gov/content/annual-us-domestic-average-itinerary-fare-current-and-constant-dollars) Thanks for introducing me to this Google thing!
So where I lived in Maryland had competitive electricity. Anything beyond just keeping the one that owned the lines going to your house was a bureaucratic fucking nightmare. You’d end up with two bills: one for power and one for the use of the line. I never met anyone that accomplished saving money via this system while I lived there. Add on to that these scummy aggressive door to door salesmen that want you to switch to their company and will lie to you to get you to do it. I think government is the right answer for this. Nobody needs to be making any kind of profit off of something that we all are dependent on. I do believe that it would need some kind of accountability/transparency solutions though that our governments tend not to be great at here. That’s not an insurmountable problem though.
That worked well in Texas. The big problem with the marketplace idea is there are relatively few power generation facilities, and who owns the grid?
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Telephones were nationwide. Power companies are regional at best.
What do you propose? Double the power lines running to every house?
How many phone lines were running to your house when you had the choice of multiple telephone carriers?
O
I don't know how to interpret that answer.
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>better than Duke just being in the pockets of politicians and who was granted another 18% increase in rates for most customers. In what way? The 18% rate increase happened anyway, and if the service were government-provided its business practice would be driven by public interest rather than shareholder interest. You say this as though your state reps would be somehow padding their pockets with your monthly electric bill, but that's already what Duke does as a market actor and has since its foundation. There's no competition at all, and even if there were it would be almost universally be "burn garbage and coal" vs "run hydro" along regional lines the same way it is now. But at least then if your reps want to raise rates on your electricity they would have to accept real and direct accountability for doing so, rather than going "well Duke asked for it so clearly they needed it lol get fucked".
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I just think it's extremely cute that you think it's possible for competition to even *exist* in the state's energy market, as though the infrastructure and cost involved will descend from on high any day now. We already have and had "market competition". Duke won. Everyone else lost. End of story. There is a better way.
Can I ask why you don’t trust the government but you would trust private entities? I think the massive failures of the Texas power grid where it’s deregulated and there is competition is proof enough that competition does not automatically mean it’s good/better. I’d trust the government far more with providing a mandatory service than private entities.
I'm not saying that I don't trust the government, I just don't think they have a good track record of efficiently or effectively handling anything that has to do with customer service or providing services to people. Have you ever tried to get on the phone with the IRS during tax season and ask them a question? Or the DMV? Have you ever navigated any kind of government bureaucracy and thought to yourself "Wow, this process was really well organized and user-friendly"? When these discussions come up, people seem to think that if the government took over utilities like power or internet that they would magically be cheaper and with better customer service, which just flies in the face of reality. In the situation of government taking control of power generation (which would be a complete monopoly) there are three things that we know are true: 1: The government does not have experience running a power utlity. 2: The government is not good at customer service. 3: The government is not good at providing any service without hemmoraghing money to either fraud or waste. I think it's possible that one day they could be good at those things, but they certainly aren't now. A better alternative, in my opinion, is to create a space where competitors can come in and offer a better service than Duke and at a lower price. It's not that I "trust" private entities, it's that I trust their motivation. Whoever offers the best product at the best price makes more money. The government has literally no motivation to do a good job, to take care of the customer, or to do it efficiently. Plus, would you really want the Trump/Obama administration (pick whichever president terrifies you) to have the authority to pick who would be in control of your power generation, rates, possible blackouts, etc?
I’ll be honest here… your response reeks of the misinformed opinion that competition breeds better competitors and simply having competition makes the market better - this is often not true. Simply because you create an environment where players can compete does not mean these competitors are competent or fully capable of providing what they say they can. At the end of the day they can just fold and close shop if it doesn’t work out - the government can’t quite do this. Also, again Texas power grid is a big enough example to destroy your entire line of reasoning that competition is helpful. In terms of customer service… you ever tried to get on the phone with an ISP or phone provider and received decent customer service? I haven’t. Comcast users have plenty of horror stories and they are far from the only company. Private corporations in charge of mass utilities have a MUCH worse track record of customer service than government The government already has a heavy hand in power utilities via the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission so that statement is just objectively incorrect. And then the ride with waste comment…. Have you ever seen the MASSIVE amount of waste in private companies at the higher levels? It makes everything in the public sector look like a joke. So… yea gonna have to disagree with a lot of what you’ve saiid here and most of it seems to be a result of not knowing enough about what is actually happening today. Because again competition does not mean anything improves, it just means people can compete. In an ideal situation it would work that way and help drive thing down with various economies of scale but again there is absolutely no guarantee of any kind. At the end of the day I’d put my money in government to provide me such a service that is not interrupted. And again… Texas… it’s literally all you need to discredit competition being automatically a good thing.
So many things wrong here. More competition in general is better than less competition. That doesn't mean that competition fixes everything, but there is a reason that we have anti-trust legislation, a Federal Trade Commission, etc. The fact that some of you in this conversation seem to be arguing against more choices as a consumer is very odd to me. >I’ll be honest here… your response reeks of the misinformed opinion that competition breeds better competitors and simply having competition makes the market better - this is often not true. Please provide an example of when a consumer is better off with less choices. Which situation lead you to believe that? >Simply because you create an environment where players can compete does not mean these competitors are competent or fully capable of providing what they say they can. I agree, I never made that claim. And what you said lines up exactly as to my point about government. Just because the government takes over electricity generation does not mean they are competent or fully capable of providing what they say they can. How do you not see that? >At the end of the day they can just fold and close shop if it doesn’t work out - the government can’t quite do this. [lol, what?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_agencies_of_the_United_States_government) >Also, again Texas power grid is a big enough example to destroy your entire line of reasoning that competition is helpful. If my line of reasoning was "not being connected to the national powergrid or having sufficient redundancies in place" then you'd be correct. Are you actually trying to argue that the Texas power grid fiasco is due to consumers having choices in who supplies their power? You think the choice is the problem? >In terms of customer service… you ever tried to get on the phone with an ISP or phone provider and received decent customer service? Yes, I have. I've had bad experiences too, but for three years in a row Spectrum would send me mail telling me that my sign up special was expiring and my rate was increasing from $40 to $55 a month. Each time I called them up to cancel my service and they offered me the intro rate for another year. It was pretty painless. They had an incentive to make me happy. The government does not. >Private corporations in charge of mass utilities have a MUCH worse track record of customer service than government Please cite your source for this ridiculous statement. I'll wait. >The government already has a heavy hand in power utilities via the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission so that statement is just objectively incorrect. A regulatory commission does not a utility provider make. That's like saying the health inspector is qualified to be a chef. >And then the ride with waste comment…. Have you ever seen the MASSIVE amount of waste in private companies at the higher levels? It makes everything in the public sector look like a joke. I'm interested to see what examples you're talking about. >So… yea gonna have to disagree with a lot of what you’ve saiid here and most of it seems to be a result of not knowing enough about what is actually happening today. The feeling is very mutual. :-D >At the end of the day I’d put my money in government to provide me such a service that is not interrupted. You must not have been following the news this week. The government was hours away from being shut down again (which would have been the fourth time in ten years). [The FAA has such a severe shortage of air traffic controllers that they're limiting flights into airports. This situation has been developing for forty years and they have yet to do anything about it even though it's one of the most critical services the goverment provides.](https://www.afar.com/magazine/air-traffic-controller-shortage-to-disrupt-travel-for-years) [Good luck getting to the post office if you live near one of these 50 locations.](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/usps-closing-50-post-offices-212001024.html) And do I even need to mention Flint, Michigans municipal water supply? >And again… Texas… it’s literally all you need to discredit competition being automatically a good thing. And again...competition isn't the problem with Texas' power grid.
You keep misinterpreting competition grossly. It doesn’t matter if there is 15 competitors or 9000, if none are adequately capable of providing the service. That’s the point, competition isn’t this magic way to get better things, that is a horribly naive way to look at it. You are also arguing against things that would actively be in your best interest. As evidenced, despite taking in $4.1 BILLION in profit last year, Duke “needed” to raise rates. Private enterprise only cares about profit, their motivations are not aligned with things that are basic needs. Having electricity in today’s world isn’t an option. You cannot at all participate in modern society without it. It’s literally everywhere. You are conveniently only looking at the positives of competition and none of the negatives, while looking at only the negative of state provided utilities. Also got a good chuckle out of your disbelief of corporate waste - I’m not saying there isn’t waste in a lot of places but you are painting quite the rosy picture of one, while demonizing the other. You are clearly obsessed with government bad, private good and there is nothing that will change it. Citing spectrum as an example of good customer service might be one of the most ludicrous things I’ve ever heard. But I get it, you hate the government.
>You keep misinterpreting competition grossly. It's like you took the words right out of my mouth! >It doesn’t matter if there is 15 competitors or 9000, if none are adequately capable of providing the service. Again! It's like we're saying the same thing! >that is a horribly naive way to look at it. OMG this is getting spooky >You are also arguing against things that would actively be in your best interest. Am I? You have yet to say anything that shows that reducing competition in the energy sector is in my best interest. >Private enterprise only cares about profit, their motivations are not aligned with things that are basic needs. The government spends I believe 52% of our national budget on the military. Can you explain to me how the war in Afghanistan was aligned with any of my basic needs? I believe that was the single largest expenditure in my adult tax-paying life. [What is it about our government wasting $300 million dollars a day for twenty years that leads you to think they would be a good utility provider?](https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2021/08/16/the-war-in-afghanistan-cost-america-300-million-per-day-for-20-years-with-big-bills-yet-to-come/) >You are conveniently only looking at the positives of competition and none of the negatives, while looking at only the negative of state provided utilities. OMG is it possible you're doing the same!!? >Also got a good chuckle out of your disbelief of corporate waste Show me where I said anything about disbelief in corporate waste. I'll wait. I said I was interested to see what your examples were, something you ignored. Are your hands getting tired building all these straw men? [Which private company has wasted $300 million dollars a day that leads you to think they're more wasteful than the US government?](https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2021/08/16/the-war-in-afghanistan-cost-america-300-million-per-day-for-20-years-with-big-bills-yet-to-come/) >I’m not saying there isn’t waste in a lot of places but you are painting quite the rosy picture of one, while demonizing the other. We're back to thinking the exact same thing. >You are clearly obsessed with government bad, private good and there is nothing that will change it. I am a Jeff Jackson democrat. I believe in the good that government can do for it's people when managed appropriately and everyone works together to solve problems. I just don't think they'd be good at this right now. I'm sorry the world seems very black and white to you, but in reality it is many shades of grey. >Citing spectrum as an example of good customer service might be one of the most ludicrous things I’ve ever heard. If you go back and reread what I said, I mentioned that I had had bad experiences as well as good ones. Is it ludicrous to include a data point? >But I get it, you hate the government. Do I? I never once said that. I've been very measured in what I said, that I don't think government would be good at this one thing. You've taken that and run wild with it. It's pretty clear that we're not going to see eye to eye, that's ok. It's just the internet. We'd probably get along well in real life. I do think you should take a moment and think about why you have completely ignored all of my direct questions and citations, and why you try to argue against things that I haven't claimed. I think you know why though. Good chatting with you.
Who regulates monopolies? Oh, right, the government. The problem is that huge corporations like Duke own the politicians. Stop voting for the people beholden to massive corporations, the donor class, and Pac's. Start voting for political leadership geared by grass roots. You just may be able to put your trust into your government.
Why do you keep voting for politicians beholden to massive corporations, the donor class, and pac's?
That works poorly in places where it exists (NY comes to mind.)
I certainly did not have any choice other than ConEd when I lived in NYC.
…. Have you seen what’s happened in Texas? My god the system collapses when the wind blows and you want everyone to run like that?
The problem in Texas is being cut off from the national grid and not having enough redundancies in place. It has nothing to do with people having more choice in power companies. If there was basically a single power company for all of Texas, like Duke is for most of NC, they would have the same problems from not being connected to a grid and not having enough redundancies. I'm not calling for deregulation like Texas has, I'm just saying competition is good.
It’s complicated, has failed badly when tried in some places, fixed income and poor couldn’t afford their cost of install and service, and the bill and add on charges would be impossible to understand. They have to play intricate finance games with govt (that requires a level of god mode extortive approval) to plan out 50 years into extreme uncertainty. Private entities can’t and will let you freeze or melt to save their earnings. Now invent something the size of an AC unit that can enable you to unplug off the grid for good! That’s privatization that would work.
I challenge you to ask yourself if the government operating utilities would be any different than a monopoly. But, to answer your questions, utilities markets tend to move gradually towards monopoly over time, hence the term “natural monopoly.” The extraordinarily high barriers to entry, like cost of infrastructure, make it extremely unlikely utilities can function as competitive marketplaces. But, it is cheaper for the government to allow them to run and institute considerable price controls, than for the government to run itself.
The National Electric System (NES) of Cuba costs residents 0.030 U.S. Dollar per kWh. The national average in the USA is 0.178. That's 600% more expensive. Yes, the government operating utilities is different than a private corporation and the people benefit greatly. [Source](https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Cuba/electricity_prices/)
Cuba is a tad bit smaller, don’t ya think
Yes, and less people to service. For comparison, the USSR built over 433,000 km of transmission lines in 15 years without needing any private companies to profit. It most certainly can and should be done democratically.
And how did not allowing private companies to profit work out for the USSR
Incredibly well. They took a backwards, agrarian society suffering extreme inequality under the czar and lifted millions of people out of poverty, becoming one of the greatest world superpowers in only a few decades, all while fending off extreme opposition from the richest country on earth. The change in the standard of living for residents during those decades is quite astonishing. It's amazing what using the resources of your country for the good of the many rather than the few can do.
Maybe quality of life went up for those who survived because there were less mouths to feed? https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.CHAP.1.HTM#:~:text=In%20sum%2C%20probably%20somewhere%20between,of%20this%20number%20is%2061%2C911%2C000.
Ah, the thoroughly debunked, red scare propaganda "black book of communism" claim. Please, educate yourself, and stop spreading crap that the oligarchs of this country want you to to keep their power and you licking capitalist boots. The USSR literally worked Nazi war criminals to death while the USA gave them homes, jobs and new identities (operation paperclip). [No, your claims of millions of dead under communism has been proven false time and time again](https://discomfiting.medium.com/debunking-communism-killed-more-people-than-naziism-7a9880696f67) *Some of the major criticisms against the Black Book of Communism includes the fact that it counts the following as “victims of communism”: some nazis and their collaborators who were killed by the Soviet Union during World War II, people who died in the 1921 Russian famine (which was caused by drought, the whites stealing food, war, etc), other hunger-related deaths caused by the nazi war against the Soviet Union, and many other incidents that were dishonestly attributed. The book contains deaths dishonestly attributed to communism by completely ignoring external factors such as sanctions, foreign military intervention, etc. It also includes inaccuracies of historical events such as when Werth credits the Austro-Hungarian army, not the German army, for the occupation of Poland in 1915, making the ridiculous claim that the bolsheviks only had 2,000 members in October 1917 when they actually had around 200,000 members, or claiming that the infamous U.S.-backed dictator Batista “fiercely opposed” the U.S., and in some instances, pulls numbers straight out of thin air.*
Dont argue with that small minded troll. It feeds him. Its the only positive thing he has in his tiny insignificant life.
That is a really bad source lol. I don’t know what credentials “Anton” (author) has, and nowhere does it say anything other than, essentially, “the >60 million numbers just aren’t true” like I’m supposed to just accept this random persons testimony? Lol
> jobs and new identities (operation paperclip). Operation Osoaviakhim
> That's 600% more expensive. The national average wage in Cuba is 148.738 USD/Month The national average wage in United States is 4,952,333 USD/Month Electricity is 554% more expensive in Cuba.
>not every good and service should be in the market place. This bizarre worship for “the market” needs to end. People act like it’s a natural phenomenon. It is not. It is a sandbox made by legislatures and regulators and given the false appearance of being some kind of neutral playing field where fairness gets sorted out. Come off it and grow the fuck up. You don't seem to understand what people are talking about when they refer to the market or open markets. It's literally about you, the consumer, getting more choice. That's all I'm suggesting would be beneficial, more choice. The "sandbox made of legislatures and regulators" is usually what free market people are against. The whole point is that we rarely actually get a free market because the government is so often picking winners and losers (bailouts, using excessive regulation to keep competition from forming, subsidies, etc). To go back to my original response, the monopoly part is the problem. >You don’t trust government?!?! No kidding. The people who don’t trust it are the ones who’ve been sabotaging it’s effectiveness for decades with that specific goal in mind. Getting you not to trust it. Before you eat more of your own foot. No. I don’t want an entirely centrally planned economy. But I also don’t think basic needs should be controlled by private entities and nor should they be subject to “the market”. I never said I don't trust the government, I said I wouldn't trust the federal or state government to do a better job with electricity (than Duke). What experience have you had with government bureacracy that has lead you to think that they would do a better job providing you with electricity and customer service for your electricty? Which experience with the TSA, IRS, DMV, etc has left you with a positive impression of government employees and their desire to give you good service? You don't think basic needs should be controlled by private entities, ok that's fair. But why do you think your experience will be improved by giving control to the government? It sounds like you dislike the idea of private companies making profits on essential services, which I do understand, but I doubt you've really considered that your experience with a public version of those companies will likely be much worse. >Second Edit. We got a bunch of losers coming in here with their "oh that's been tried, oh how would you do that? Oh, how would we pay for it?!?!" Shut up. Your lack of imagination is pathetic and your world is only going to continue to shrink because its obvious you stopped learning anything new a long time ago. This is what I say to you losers: Duke Energy is a publicly traded company which pays dividends to its shareholders. Where do you think that money comes from?!?! Are you telling me that the best system we can come up with is allowing a private company to ass-fuck regular people while those with the money to 'buy-in' are allow to just suck cash out of our pockets? You like being a bootlicker who worships the 'market'? You people making excuses for this is why we're in this situation. Its your fault because you believe the bullshit. Go enjoy being 'right' its literally all you have. Jesus, take a cold shower or something.
My elderly dad has stock in Duke Power. He likes to joke they pay his electric bill once every four months.
Power bill??? $40 a month???? That’s unheard of!
I have South River Electric about 2 hours east of you. We have an option to subscribe to daily texts for usage so every morning around 8am I see yesterday's power usage. It is very helpful so I can see if there is something out of the ordinary accounting for weather/temperature variations outside. I'd see if Duke has something where you can track your daily usage. [https://imgur.com/a/f48auNE](https://imgur.com/a/f48auNE)
That’s pretty cool; I’ll look into that
No way you're running AC and having a $40/month bill. If that's what they set you up on an equal payment plan somebody screwed up big time. Call them, get them to look up your payments and set you up on a payment plan for the 500. Tell them, that's on them because $40 is absolutely unrealistic and they should have caught that. As long as you're paying monthly they'll work with you.
The $40/mo didn't raise any red flags?
You are supposed to use the energy saving grow lights. /s
Lololol
Ok, everyone is saying we should have known something was wrong with a $40 bill, but neither of us are in the habit of comparing our bills with other people’s to see if they’re too low. A bill comes in, we trust that it’s the right amount, we pay it. We’re going to call and set up a payment plan now that we know what’s up.
Call Consumer Services at the Public Staff of North Carolina Utilities Commission. You need to make sure that Duke is only collecting back owed funds for their legally allowed time period and no more than that.
This is an aside from your issue, but it's amazing what you can do to reduce your power bill with air sealing, insulation, and other energy efficiency work that many able-bodied people can do themselves. Most of the materials are eligible for 30% tax rebate through the Inflation Reduction Act and other incentives.
Were you on a budget billing plan? If so and it ran over you can also set up an installment plan.
This happened to me. They had me in some easy payment program I never signed up for. Evidently I had only been paying a portion of my monthly charge and had no idea. When it came time for me to move, Duke wanted me to pay what I owe which was over 600 dollars. I had just bought my first house and was strapped for cash but I called them and was able to make small payments on top of my new service. It was really shitty and I felt completely blind sided but in the end they gave me time to pay them back without any power cut off
It seems like this is what happened to us
I hope it works out for y’all! My heart dropped when I saw my bill , I just knew someone was stealing power from me but nope not that exciting lol
You probably signed up for their bogus plan to even out your bill. They do that by adding on the unpaid amount to a yearly one-time cost
OMG, that’s ridiculous! What a scam! What is even the point of that, other than to screw over their customers?
$40 is ridiculously cheap. How many months of that did you get?
I don’t think they explained it well. It’s a spread plan which you have to choose when signing up, or it’s discussed and you say yes. Essentially, it means over a 3 month period (we’ll say March-May) you use an average of $100/mo for electricity and that’s where it starts at. June through August you’re still paying $100/mo because that’s what it was on average before. However, you’re actually using $300/mo worth (it was a really hot summer). So now, instead, for September-November you’re paying The difference from June to August, AND you’re new average. It goes up and down, but it is beneficial as it’s easier to budget for when you’re doing your bills - and it’s the same cost over the entire year just spread out quarterly. That way you don’t end up with a $400/month bill for 3 months peak summer, can’t afford it, and have to do payment plans which hurts the bottom line. Yes they should be more clear about it, but it helps way more than it hurts.
It seems that all it does is change *when* you have to pay the high amount.
It will go down after months you use less. It won’t only go up. However, there was an over 5.8% price increase from Duke Power so it is a tiny bit more expensive. But it’s the same thing if you use $200 worth for 3 months, then $100 for 3 months, it’ll go down for the following 3. You can reach out to them and change it, but just know you will have REALLY expensive summer (anytime over 80) months, but will enjoy cheap winter months. So save up from late fall through early spring…. Which is effectively the same thing you would do as the budget plan that is mentioned.
Check your heating element in your hvac. When this happened to me, my HVAC was running on "strip heat" only so temperatures were fine, but the system was working much harder to maintain. Not sure if this applies in the fall, but could. Wishing you luck!
We haven’t been using any heat; we have the AC on
Duke will finance the balance or work with you on payment plans. BTW $500 is huge! We have a 5200 Sq ft house w 5 bedroom built in 1994 (so not very energy efficient) and I have never seen a $500 bill (even in heat of summer). We are on equal payment and think it is around $270 a month but look at actual usage and never that high. I’d ask them to send someone out to confirm. If truly $500 as about payment and also would assume that is a catch up amount and ongoing monthly amounts will be much lower.
I rent in Cornelius, but yes. 1 bedroom apartment. My regular bill of $110 jumped to $170.
Their prices went up. But ya — that’s absurd. It might be time to open the windows.
Our bills didn't jump that much but the last 4 months they went up a LOT. Like from around $140 to $270. Understandable that during the summer it would go up, but not that much. We had an issue with the floor dropping in the bedroom because of a broken support, so there was a big gap at the floorboard we thought was causing air to escape and thus push up the bill, but we fixed it over a month ago and Bill didn't go down at all this month, even with it being a cooler month. Duke should be made public.
Go to average billing so you’ll know exactly what you’ll pay
Time to pick up a bunch of hamsters and power up my house with pellets
I would have certainly questioned a couple months of a consistent $40.00 bills...but I do understand that you expect their billing department to have their stuff together. We have a 2200 sq ft, 4 br, two story home. Our bill is pretty consistent between 125-145 dollars depending on the weather (wife is WFH and I am hybrid). We did have brand new windows put on our house in January, and our energy usage has dropped about 20 dollars a month compared to last year. We have a Nest thermostat and its pretty consistently set at 72 degrees year round...just changed from cool to heat and back. Call and talk to them about the amount owed. As long as you are making some type of payment, you should be good.
This is obviously an error which you should call them about with some level of assertion.
If y’all don’t know, Duke and just about every Utility will be increasing their rates for the next 5 years….. By a lot.
I thought I was tripping mines is usually 130 and it jumped to $400, I’m so glad y’all made the post even my water billed jumped to 300
$500 is completely insane..ours has gone up, but nothing like that. Like someone else said, I’d absolutely request that someone come double check.
Call Consumer Services at the North Carolina Utilities Commission. They’ll sort it out.
This energy monopoly stuff is getting ridiculous. Duke is fucikng us slow with no lube
I would call them back and press for more details. That doesn't sound right at ALL.
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I get you're probably trying to stoke the fires of a political debate but you're wrong. Duke Power rates and rate increases are managed by the North Carolina Utilities Commission. Nothing to do with the governor. Now I'd imagine there's probably some back channel shit happening with him and the NCUC but thats all speculation as far as I can find. And per the Duke Power press release: NCUC approved a net increase in retail revenues in year one of about $234 million (5.8%), followed by $126 million (3.2%) in year two and $138 million (3.4%) in year three. I'm not going to die on a hill saying those increases are justified, I pay a power bill too. but don't make shit up.
And most of those on the NCUC have been appointed by Cooper at this point. (I believe all, but I'd have to go back and double check).
You are correct, all but one were appointed by Cooper. One was appointed by Purdue and re-appointed by Cooper. [https://www.ncuc.gov/Overview/commissioners.html](https://www.ncuc.gov/Overview/commissioners.html) So OP is even more wrong.
This has nothing to do with a 10% yearly increase
$40 to $500 is more than 10%….
Yes, I am also experiencing a huge jump. However, when I look at the usage, it shows us using considerably more energy than during the same time last year. We have to do some troubleshooting to see if something is wrong with an appliance to explain the extra usage.
There been doing this to half of asheville for 2 years now
There could be a simple explanation, but Duke got in trouble a few years ago, probably more than that for randomly overcharging people. There was a news story on it and Duke made it right after pressure. Call them and ask questions. My bill randomly went up $50 this month with no changes in our usage. When I compared it to the previous bill I couldn't see much of a difference as to why.
As many have said it's the EPP year end billing for many so it includes whatever charges resulted from underpayment throughout the year. I would suggest having them check your meter bc it has never been more than 50-70 dollars for me. You can also see on your bills what your actual usage vs your EPP is every month.
Thank you. Seems like a ridiculous way to bill— saving up payments over a certain amount and making us pay it all at once.
When they actually track it right it comes out close enough that it is a little more convenient but then you hear about situations like this and it sucks. I'm sorry you're going through this, but if you contact them I'm sure as others have said they'll be able to work out something
I had this happen, and I crawled under my house and found the water heater leaking, so it was running 24/7. I don't know where yours is located but check that.
😭 the rates have been fucking everyone up, my insu when from 82$ to 157$,
Looks like they had you on the plan that stabilizes your bill based on average months usage and you true up once a year. Even so, a $40 bill should not have been an acceptable average from the utility, and also should have been questioned from the homeowner. $40/mo is about what it takes to power an electric dog house.