O Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, to thy rustic cot I come!
for a messenger hath arrived, a highlander from Bowral, one who gets milked by the complexities of modern life, not least by Elektra the thief of my delecta electra milk, announcing that many companies now lurk amongst nubile dark skinned Amazonians from Lesbos, (even with both still intact). Who knock on my temple’s Corinthian plywood door to change elektrikity accounts.
Seriously, what the f#%ck is happening with getting door knocks to change over my power accounts? Doesn’t all electricity flow through the same cables and power poles? So what’s this with Energy Australia, AGL, Red Energy et all, all knocking and trying to sweet talk me into changing my account. They come resplendent with charts and kilowatts savings on this and that, promise free channel TV. I always thought everyone pays the same for electricty usage.
In my earlier days, electricity and phone were all supplied and all paid for by usage. Are we to be forever to be pursued by dodgy merchants? How on earth is it possible to now, at my latter years, to worry about competing elektrasity prices and kilowatts?
Answers bitte!
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Ah, the electrickery companies! Doncha just love ’em? It’s all about who gets to be the middleman between the electricity producer and the consumer; the ones who market the ‘product’ and collect the bills… especially the collecting the bills bit!
It may also involve a lot of ‘sleight of hand’ to convince the customer he’s buying clean electrickery from an environmentally electrickery producer when in fact he’s probably paying a premium price for coal-fired electrickery.
They’re doing just what the telcos did a little while ago, which also annoyed the hell out of me… and they’re SOOOOOOOOOOO smooooooooooooothe…
Anyway, gotta go now and meet some of the inmates of the new ‘hobbit village’ I seem to have found myself in… They’re having a free ‘sausage sizzle’; I can do without the snags, but should at least go and say ‘G’day’ or they may feel ‘snubbed’; also discovered this morning that at least one of the local dogs like the blues…
Maybe there are some other local musos…
😉
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A couple of years ago, we had a very rude woman arrive at the doorstep, who knew all of our details, and was ready to sign us up for electricity from the gas company. I told her that I would like a few days to think about it. She implied that I was some sort of idiot then left. She returned a couple of days later, ready for me to sign. I told her that I had signed up with energy australia to provide my gas and power. She wasn’t very happy!
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Yes, but the women knocking on my door are not rude. They have large coal black eyes with a hint of little babies left at home. They seem to exude such desperation to succeed. I don’t know why they are all heavily Indian accented and so keen to please and earn credibility.
I am upset that with electricity we seem to have gone down to a form of free enterprise whereby everything is lowered to just money, including using women with large coal eyes…And babies left at home.
Free enterprise and democracy, bah?
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Those seductive, coal-eyed (or, should it be khol eyed?) mums.
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BM, kohl eyed of course, I never knew a man would know the difference….Congratulations!
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Whatever you want to do about elektracity, please could you refrain turning off lights when I’m still reading, fair crack of the whip, mate!
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H, how Australian of you “fair crack of the whip mate” classic.
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Gez, there’s a lotto shit going down in this space. Once we were even offered a deal with a new “Micro” meter that has different rates for different times of the day. Aim: to get many customers to switch to using their heavy drain appliances (say washing and hot water and drying etc) in the night.
Promise: you can reduce your bill (see chart 37) by 23%. Downside (see fine print) electricity you do use in the peak day time costs three times as much as it does now. Downside #2 – cannot go back to the old meter and rating system if you get screwed on the new deal. Downside # 3 – who knows what the fucking rates will be after the “deal” runs out in 2 year’s time.
Just bend over and cough.
FM and I are planning to
a) check out solar despite the dodgy rebate scheme – simply because we have no confidence in the state or federal regulators or the electricity companies to give a shit about how their pricing kicks us;
b) look at a battery-based system (that is, don’t just feed juice back into the grid; do that after the home storage is full – and use your own stored power when it’s dark, and
c) check out a single dwelling wind turbine. Preliminary buzz is that these are neither too big, not too expensive. We have a Green-dominated Council – and we live half way up a hill with fairly good wind patterns for generating power.
Since a good power bill for us is say $550 a quarter and a bad one is closer to $1,000, we can spend quite a lot on power generating gear that lasts for years before it becomes a poor deal.
Fingers crossed we can bring it together.
Then the power companies can all go and get nicked.
Next stop – “independent communications”
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Yes,
Solar is the polar. I reckon with Elektra tripling her services, we either go solar, solo in the dark with ma paw, or to the soup kitchen. I could write a lot about our down-light plights. In fact it will be a ‘special’, coming to you soon Keep glued to the screen!
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Yep, solar, and wind, are becoming more and more appealing, with, or without gummint rebates.
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We spent a week in a mate’s holiday place up the coast. They have an interesting hot water heater. It’s like a reverse fridge – instead of pumping heat out of a box, it pumps heat into the hot water tank from the outside air. I’m thinking that those little super efficient and ultra-reliable (run for bloody decades) fridge motors are much better technology than heating elements.
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MJ, Tutu and I got solar and it shaves 50 bucks a bill. Our quarterly rate is around 200 bucks as its a very small home. We are hoping to reduce our running costs over time.
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So, Hung.
Assuming you have quarterly bills you would have a saving of $ 200.- a year. I am curious how much you spent on the solar. I reckon I would be happy to get a return of 7%. This would mean in your case to have spent about $ 3000.-.Is that so?
Of course, with a tripling of power over the next ten years we would all be wise to go solar.
Hung one,
If your power bill triples your return on solar would also triple to $ 600.- a year. This gives you a return of $21,% This would in return cover the 30 year life span of the solar panels. (depreciation)
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I haven’t done the maths Gez but we paid $4000 and the government paid $8000 for 1.5 kilowatt system. The sun shines here all the time however I am told that over 38 degrees their efficiency drops off. I wasn’t here when it was installed however the workman told Tutu that it was the equivalent of running the fridge all year for free.
The aim of it was to reduce the homes running cost as it was our plan to die here. Assuming I have 30 years left on the planet it seemed a good investment. We also put in two rainwater tanks with pumps, one feeds one of the loos and the other waters the back yard which is all low water natives and no lawn. Later I will install a grey water system fed by the laundry which is currently priced at $2500.
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The poles and wires are a smokescreen, gerard. Electrickery is a powerful form of medieval magic that derives the source of its power from the communing of its priestesses with the public.
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In future, at any intrusion or medieval elektrickery, I’ll just weave my magic wand and oooooooofff they’ll puff.
It’s all so much fried air.
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Shit, you had me hooked with the Elektra lure, Gaz!
I was trying so hard to decipher the first paragraph, using all my knowledge of ancient Greek and mythology, all my insight and inside in the girl’s story, had all the pages of all the books I’ve ever read flicked through in my brain and got nowhere.
I was utter your “what the f#%ck is happening…” well before I came across it.
Then, I got to the point of your none-too-subtle inclusion of this mythological creature. Elektra! One of the Pleiades (read my next episode for them) The “shiny one.” The “well lit one.” etc, etc.
Yes, they used to knock on our door as well for quite a while but they had always met me with a very stern dismissive gesture of my hand even before they muttered their second word. They haven’t come for a long time.
I don’t understand this phenomenon either, other than by way of “such is the way of Mammon!”
One pole, one wire coming from the same generator plant, yet so many companies want to sell it to you!
I suspect, it is the bureaucracy they want to buy from us. The paperwork, the clerical work, etc, which, in these days of computer button clicking, it should be a money printing business. Mammon loves money printers!
Next time they knock, Gaz, pull your fly down and say… no I better not encourage hat sort of behaviour on a public forum where wives can read them!
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At my age Ato, the fly is more down than up. It’s becoming far more medical than sexual.
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I got caught out, too. At first glance, I thought it was one of Ato’s!
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