FPL pushes hard for rate hike

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We are being overcharged for power in South Florida by a corrupt monopoly.

A Florida Power & Light communications director dug up dirt on regulators who are considered consumer-friendly and posted disparaging comments about them on blogs as part of the utility's effort to win a rate hike.

FPL executives have said they want their $1.27 billion base rate hike proposal to be judged on its merits, free from political influence. But the company has conducted an aggressive campaign, some of it behind the scenes, to push for the increase.

DirecTV has fixed my TV. The problem is that it wasn't broken.

In an effort to really piss me off, DirecTV succeeded in fixing something that wasn't broken and I'm left with no TV tonight.

Starting around 3:00 am this morning, the receivers in my living room and kitchen started trying to download "new software" and all it seemed to do was erase what software was resident on the receivers and then cut them off. After hitting the reset button every hour for 4 hours, I called DirecTV and had my first "fight" with their automated system that wanted me to talk to a machine. No matter how much I talk to those things, it cannot understand the words coming out of my mouth.

After really getting frustrated, I proceeded to hit "0" on my phone and guess what? I got a real person. Not only did I get a real person, but I got one whose first language was English and he was in Indiana. I was almost speechless as I let in to him with both barrels, which I sincerely apologized about later on, when I got to thinking that this guy could be working from a jail cell somewhere. But hey, at least I could understand the words that were coming out of his mouth.

To make a long story short (I know, too late), he believes that my dish is misaligned (something I have been telling them about since Hurricane Wilma's eye blew over my house in 2005) and may be the reason why I loose reception with just one drop of rain and why neither TV is getting the update.

We'll see. They are due sometime between sunrise and sunset tomorrow. The computer voice, when it called me about an hour ago to confirm the appointment, asked if some other time would be better, I almost started to look for the moonrise and moonset times and then just thought I'd better leave that one alone.

Call it intuitive, but....

Well... I called it. Our 500 drops of rain has awoken FPL and it has now decided that we are not paying enough. So, it is going to raise our rates so that we can continue to enjoy their high quality services, not to mention upgrade the nuclear plants to produce more power which, while it may be fine for keeping the air clean, will still continue to produce radio-active waste.

Lovely... just fucking lovely!

FPL wants to boost electric rates by at least $1 billion a year

The company submitted a proposal Wednesday to the Florida Public Service Commission to increase base power rates by $1 billion in 2010 and $1.25 billion in 2011.

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'Tis the Season for FPL Ranting

We here in South Florida have a little less than 11 weeks to prepare for hurricane season. Last year, there was a storm two weeks before the season officially began.

I have just started making lists and I was hoping that Florida Power and Light (FPL) would also be working at making our fragile electric grid a little stronger. We lucked out last year with no strong storms, however, even after all the time since Hurricane Wilma passed, I still have 3 to 4 outages a week. Some weeks, it goes out every day. Some of my friends, along with me, have lost some appliances due to power surges.

Our bills have doubled and it has been promised that electricity cost will rise even more in the near future and most of us are just stuck with a company that doesn't care about its customers, I guess because there is no competition.

I just cannot accept the excuse that the reason power went off in 3 counties in the last 24 hours is because it rained. That is not an excuse. That is a cop-out.

Thousands still without power after South Florida rain storms

Electricity has been restored to about half the 24,000 Florida Power & Light customers left in the dark after heavy overnight rains doused Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, causing dozens of traffic accidents that snarled the morning commute.

About 11,200 utility customers are still affected.

As of noon, those still affected were 4,000 customers in Miami-Dade County, 3,200 in Broward and 4,000 in Palm Beach County, FPL said.

"It's a shifting number," said utility spokeswoman Sarah Marmion. "It's been going up and down all night long. We anticipate there will be outages throughout the day. But we have ample crews ready to go."

Among the reason for the outages are brittle branches that broke free during the storm and struck power lines. At least one transformer also malfunctioned somewhere in Broward, Marmion said.

The number of outages, Marmion said, is small when considering FPL serves more than 2.2 million customers in the tri-county area.

"We haven't had a storm in a long time," she said. "These are relatively common numbers."

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Green Revolution

Watched this today on CNN. If you didn't see this interview with Tom Friedman, please take a little time and watch it.

Florida Power and Light

I am at my wits end!

During the hurricane season of 2005, we had a few storms that came through Hollywood, however, the big one was Wilma.

In the aftermath of Wilma, I did not have electrical power for 29 days.

Since the power has been returned, not one week as passed that I haven't lost power. Today was typical. Three power outages; all of them blinked completely off than right back on again. I'm sure that these outages were the cause of my washer/dryer going bad and it didn't help my old computer.

When I called Florida Power and Light (FPL), they tell me that they are aware of the problems that occur on my grid, however, at this time there are no plans to fix the problem due to rising repair costs.

I wish I had the money to install alternative power sources. I really only have one available to me. The City of Hollywood will not allow any wind turbine. Solar would help, but the cost for my home would be in the range of $40K

The rebate (up to $20K) that was promised to Floridians was not funded this year, the last year mandated by the US Congress, who went on their August vacation without passing an extension.

FPL has a monopoly on power in south Florida and they do not care. I can only hope that somewhere in the near future, someone can come up with an inexpensive way to power one's home and can clearly give one a choice between FPL and something else to supply power to South Florida Homes.