Dear Editor:
I feel a strong need to respond to the article in your May 22nd issue “FortisBC brass say most customers benefit from controversial rate system” because many of their statements are misleading and one statement is absolutely false.
To start with, I should point out that, before I retired, I worked for more than 30 years for the federal government on energy policy, including 11 years as Director, Policy Development and Analysis for the Office of Energy Efficiency.
So, I know what I’m talking about.
You quote Mark Warren, FortisBC’s director of customer services as saying, “The only way a residential customer’s bill can dramatically increase is by a similar increase in consumption”.
This is completely untrue. In my case, for example, my electricity bill for Feb-April 2013 is 20 per cent above last year’s while my consumption is down 1.5 per cent.
The reason for this is that Fortis did not actually implement a true conservation rate that would provide all of its customers with an incentive to reduce their electricity consumption. This would have required setting different threshold levels (for moving from tier 1 to tier 2) for different types of customers.
Instead, Fortis set a single threshold level for all of its customers.
In this way, Fortis simply transferred a significant percentage of their total charges from those who do not use electricity for home and water heating (as most of these customers have access to natural gas) to those who do (primarily rural customers with no access to natural gas).
Not surprisingly, the “more than 75 per cent of customers” who have had their bills reduced as a result of this transfer of energy charges are not complaining.
But this doesn’t mean the new rate system is either fair or effective.
In fact, I fail to understand how Fortis can say that their new rate system effectively encourages conservation when it reduces electricity rates to more than 75 per cent of their customers without actually requiring them to, first, reduce their consumption. Basic economic theory states that reducing the price will actually result in increased electricity use. As for those of us in the remaining 25 per cent, our consumption levels are primarily determined by the weather, not price.
In my case, I use a geothermal heat pump for home heating (as recommended by the government for environmental reasons) and my house, which is only five years old, is very well insulated with energy efficient windows.
Yet, I am still considerably above the threshold with no hope of getting down to that level.
There is a petition against Fortis’ discriminatory rate system, that I would urge all customers to sign who have been unfairly impacted. You can sign your name at http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/fortis2tierprotest.html.
Nick Marty
Osoyoos, B.C.
