August 23, 2012Dear Sir,After reading your article in today’s Royal Gazette regarding electricity charges, I took the opportunity to comment on my bills. My family and I have been very conscious of our electricity use, and it has been the centre topic at our dinner table month after month since December, 2011. That’s when we were away on vacation from November, 2011 to mid-December, 2011, a total of three weeks. Before leaving for our trip and, as per usual, every appliance, every water heater and our water pump were unplugged, no interior or exterior lights were tripped on during that time, not even a night light and the refrigerator was the only electrical use. Prior to that, our monthly bill would be regularly in the $400 to $450 range (and we felt that was even over price, but we never complained). Upon our return, our next month’s statement was a huge surprise, considering no one was living at the house. It was a whopping $632. After our complaint was launched and no viable answer was given for the increase, we went on and settled the debt.Now this is the weird part of the story. After that month, our bill somehow regulated itself and went back to the usual monthly cost. Things remained normal from that point until about May, 2012, when we received a hike on our bill of $104 (so our bill has been in the $550 per month range since).This prompted us to change all the bulbs in our home, we have installed a point of use tankless water heater under our kitchen sink, eliminating one heater that was shared by the kitchen, a power bath and the laundry. Now we wash clothes with cold water. We do not have air conditioning in the house, using only two ceiling fans on a conscious basis, we have a gas cooktop. We now have two water heaters in use, only because our son is here from school for the summer. After August we will have no need for the use of his to be plugged in, therefore the heaters are unplugged, and only plugged in for one hour a day from 5am to 6am; that stays hot enough until we arrive home in the evening for a shower after work. After making the new investment to cut cost and doing everything possible to see a reduction in our last billing monthly statement, we couldn’t wait to see the effect of our effort reflecting on the bill (we were so excited).Well, when I opened the bill I was stunned to see that this months total went from $550 to $689. I was so upset, and tried to go over the bill very carefully, only to see that the fuel charge was almost equal to the usage charge, as I went over my previous statements I could see where the increase was tacked on. So after reading in the paper how Belco wanted a rate increase and for the customer to incur the cost, they are receiving it through the back door. This is why now they are not asking us to pay now. They couldn’t justify asking the customer to pay for the work Belco wanted to do. Yes, we benefit from the upgrades and we will eventually pay it down the road anyway. I am in business also and I could not ask my customers to pay up front for my tools. If I was a landscaper and my lawnmower is outdated and continues to break down, whose responsibility is it to either upgrade it or get it fixed?So when Belco is asking us to cut back and watch how we use our electricity, I don’t believe that they are sincere. Firstly they are doing their best to get the customer to pay for their upgrades, and willing to go to court to support their claim, second when they were asked to keep the hurting public in mind during this hard time for most Bermudians, they insisted and were so insensitive toward the Minister’s concerns regarding the people of Bermuda. If they need and needed the rate increase so desperately why now would they tell us to cut and reserve energy consumption, If most of us were to do that, there would be less revenue for their company. It is smoke and mirrors, because they said in earlier statements that one reason for the hike was because so many people are without electricity and we need to balance it out by charging more to complete the upcoming upgrade. So if they need the increase because less revenue is coming in due to the economic downturn, why then would they ask us to consume less energy to generate even less revenue? (Let that sink in for a moment.) The only solution now is to drastically raise the fuel adjustment on the customer. How do we fight that battle, how do we determine what rate they are being charged determining how much each customer pays? We don’t know, and when they pay less for fuel, do we see a decrease?WORKING TO PAY BELCOSmith’s