RAGE

Sometimes I have rage. When I have rage, people assume that I am mad at God, or I'm mad because of this disease. I'm not. This shitty disease is just part of the gamble that comes with life. No one is exempt. Everyone carries their risk.

What makes me angry are the ones who kick you when your down, or who abuse their power because they can. One of my personal experiences has been with Clarke Electrical Co-op. They provide electricity to where we live. As a matter of fact we heat with electricity. The reason we heat with electricity is because we were told that you get a special rate if you heat with electricity. I believed them.

I went shopping for electrical heat sources, A couple of the kids went with me. Our criteria was how much space did this product take, price, and to our laymen's minds electrical usage. We went with an area heating system. When we had the house about done and winter was coming. I thought I'd better get on top of that and contacted Clarke Electrical. This is when I was told that I couldn't have the heating rate. I was told that I should have contacted the company before installing. I needing the heating source to go through a different box so they could meter it for the discount. And with the type of heat source we had I also had to get an electric hot water heater. I told them that I did not want an electric hot water heater. I liked my gas tankless that was actually efficient. I told them that the electric would eat up so much juice that I would probably lose the savings anyway. The company representative agreed.

Later, when a plumber was here checking out a pilot light, we mentioned our situation. He got kind of irritated. "They don't need to run that through a separate box", he told us, "There's this little donut gizmo that fits over the wire going to your heater and they can tell how much electricity you use. They're not giving you decent rate cause they can get out of it." He went on about the virtues and downfalls of electrical service in different service areas. Clarke electric came up short all the way around.

Later, I was talking to one of the women that worked in the Clarke electric office. I let her know I was mad about not getting the heating rate. She said I should get the heating rate. Yes, they COULD put the donutty gizmos on. Then she asked what kind of heating we had. I told her," In the wall, zoned"

"Oh, you're exempt"

"I'm exempt?"

"Yeah, we don't give heat deductions for that kind of system"

So here I am, trying to be the good little consumer. I try to not be excessive in my lifestyle. I try to not use more then my fair share, cause there is a big planet out there with a lot of people on it. I try to be responsible and because of that I pay $.30 per kilowatt hour instead of $.12. I don't like being manipulated. I don't like being lied to and I don't like being taken advantage of because someone else is holding all the cards.

So, this is what I am prophesying for the future. The grid is such an inefficient structure anyway. Ninety percent of the electricity created is just lost through the air on the grid. I believe that the use of the grid outside of metropolitan areas will soon be obsolete. It is far more efficient to have a stand alone system in the country rather then running wire and poles and burying wire and putting in transformers over long distances. There are some new developments just waiting there for people to grab up, like the special paint that can turn an entire buildings surface into a solar collector. The new window glass that is laced with a fine filament and every window can become a solar collector. They are on the verge of having electrical storage units that far surpass what we think of as "batteries". They just have to get it in production.

But in the meantime, I have the overwhelming desire to build a bunch of homemade wind turbines and run the juice back onto the grid. I read about it in MAKE magazine, issue 5. You see, when installing the electricity the lineman let me know that they don't like it when people feed back into the grid. That's all the excuse that I really need.....because, I HAVE RAGE.

louie