Electric bills spike, why ?

A COLUMN By Frederick Sinclair

Spring of 2025 has brought with it a tragic series of challenges in the form of high winds, baseball size hail, tornadoes, downpours and severe flooding. This, after winter 24-25 proved itself to be one to remember in myriad challenging ways. Extreme weather warnings have been routine with nationwide coverage chanting the mantra “Get to your safe place”. The red flag of ‘Climate Change’, raised globally, appears to be rearing its ugly head. Previous articles have discussed causality and to what extent human behavior is responsible versus the extent that natural forces factor into earth temperature, fires, and punishing storms. Yet here we are. The urgency to scapegoat Carbon Dioxide emissions, as the primary cause of global warming, has resulted in frenzied environmental policy ‘house of cards’. Each card resting on poorly thought out strategies and ignorance of consequence.

A shocking example arrived last week in the mail. The monthly NYSEG electric bill had more than doubled, in 30 days, at a time and season when usage (cost) traditionally lessens. Close examination of charges showed a cost increase for the electricity from 6 cents per kilowatt hour to 11 cents. There was also a mysterious jump in the actual usage recorded also. There was no estimate correction or Smart Meter conversion at fault. Contact and discussion with NYSEG revealed some interesting facts:  The price of electricity increase had been authorized by the Public Service Commission (PSC) to almost double and ‘by the way’ there will be another rate hike in a few months to accomplish a total of three price hikes approved. NYSEG is now merged with RG&E and they are owned and operated and policy set by a company headquartered in Europe. Goals set in the NYS Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 justified rate hikes and improvement of the delivery grid and is intended to comply with the Paris Accord for CO2 reduction. Projected future demand was going to require a more robust grid to manage distribution, while eliminating almost 50% of the supply by phasing out natural gas generating stations, and adding full electrification goals for homes, business, appliances, cars, trucks, school busses etc. Smart Grid technologies and Smart Meters are anticipated, to cost of over a billion dollars and are needed to manage the massive changes in usage patterns and to manage rapidly increasing input from expanded construction of solar and wind farms.

There doesn’t appear to be much concern about the removal of supply from the base of the house of cards and the stacking of demand on top. The deployment of 5G and soon to be 6G, along with the internet of things, is an energy hog expected to require 5 to 6 times the current Telecom and data processing demand for electricity. Rapidly expanding Artificial intelligence and the required hundreds of acres of data centers (cloud) processing and cooling power usage alone, is estimated to use and surpass all of the solar and wind gains to be installed. The cost of electrifying an explosive growth in the emerging technocracy,  when added to the repair costs from unrelenting weather catastrophes and emergency funding to reconstruct infrastructure, cannot be covered on the backs of taxpayers or home and business electric bills. There has to be a re-think of what the energy system of the future needs to be. We certainly can’t build such a system on top of an already collapsing House of Cards.

Note: In coming weeks we will update on and revisit alternative energy sources and explore the wisdom of a decentralized power supply and usage.

Fred Sinclair is an Alfred NY based opinion writer who looks at life differently than most. His mind is wide open for inquiry or argument anytime, fpsinclair@yahoo.com