WAPA rate increase

I read about this recently on cnn and yahoo news and I think this is where are paper butchered the story, we really have awful newspapers. The price of gas is going up the summer everywhere even though the gas/oil sales are down everywhere. Its not wapa deciding to raise the prices of their service willy nilly, the price of oil is going up because OPEC has decide to raise even those there is not as great of demand for it this summer.

It awful news either way I was expecting this.

WAPA is raising BOTH the Leac and their base rate...both are increasing a substantial amount, I think July 1.

Typical BS!

That means we will all get low bills this coming month because they will estimate the bills on the low side. When the rate goes up next month, guess what??? They will then actually read the meters and charge at the higher rate for the power used at the lower rate but not billed because it was "estimated". Really ticks me off that they do this, and we've seen it over and over.

Do you have a meter on site? Can you read it yourself?

Yes, we can (and do) read our meters. Then what? You think they are going to give me a credit?

No Juanita I just want to understand how things work. Did I offend you? If so mea culpa.
I used to have a big dog and the meter reader wouldn't read the meter if Rocky was out.
So I read the meter and created a simple little spread sheet so I knew what the bill should be.
The power company had little green cards you could use to read your meter and mail in for billing purposes for people whom it was tough to get a regular read. Every 6 months you had to make arrangements for them to do an official reading to verify you were correctly reporting your usage.
My spread sheet was dead on to a few pennies. After a couple years they didn't even bother with an official read as my mail in readings always matched when they did. I also sub metered electric to an apartment part of my main home and used the same system to bill my tenant.
So I wondered if you could not keep track of what you used and know what to expect.

Gosh no. No offense. My hint of sarcasm was directed at WAPA, not you. I have 17 meters, and we read them every month. We try to do it on the same day WAPA does, so we can compare. Our tenants pay their own electric, and since we offer short term and long term rentals, tenants come and go, and I have to bill them according to what they actually used, not what WAPA says they used. Most of the time the readings are right on, but when there is an upcoming rate increase there is always a very low reading the month prior to the increase. Then they can "catch up" , but it's at the higher rate. I might be able to take my readings down to WAPA and spend an entire day trying to get a credit, but since it's intentional to begin with, I doubt they would be very accommodating, and with 17 bills to adjust, well my time is worth more.

Michael,

WAPA doesn't work anything like your power provider stateside. It is a racket, plain and simple. It is impossible to explain, and you can't understand it until you've lived with it.

I think I have a new business here that will make lots of money.

I will be called it the WAPA Special.

It will be a large jar of Vaseline with a label that says "Get Ready Here it Comes!!!!"

Wapa has done everything in their power to stop alternative energy so that they can keep their profits up. Almost any state in the union allows connection to the grid by an individual owner but not WAPA. Why! Is does electric flow by different laws here? I guess around 200 million people have the right in the main land but us 110,000 are held hostage.

It is a shame that some one does not do something. The energy office could, but won't. And don't count on the government. They are part of the problem here. Each of us is paying more for power as WAPA is collecting from U and I the unpaid government power costs.

It makes you sick.

By the way, I will tell you that the workers at WAPA are very good based on my dealings with them.

billd

I'm with you Juanita, maybe because we are neighbors I also get the estimated bill just before they raise rates. They ALWAYS estimate low with the low rates then charge the high rates for the next meter reading that will show high usage!

I agree, it's a racket! Back to living one room at a time. If it wasn't for the noise, I would choose to live one room at a time on generator, rather than paying WAPA all summer!

Don't be fooled - this has nothing to do with supply and demand or OPEC. The oil producers are once again along for the ride and have NO control on prices by manipulating supply. What is driving pricing is speculation again. Wall Street is buying oil again to hedge against perceived devaluation of the dollar (from massive federal spending programs to boost the economy.) The amount of money speculators pump into the market (think hedge funds - instruments of the rich) far exceeds the materials cost of making product. We are floating in a glut of supply as storage tanks, ships, etc. have been leased to hold product until a time when prices go up. Further, demand is projected to be down 3% this year. Lower demand and excess supply would dictate lower prices in a 'free market' but we really don't have a 'free market' anymore due to the impact of speculators.

One proposed solution kicked around every so often is to make those bidding on oil take physical possession. This could work short-term I suspect but long-term I believe it would just amount to a massive escalation of the storage market and speculators buying oil 'condos' as it were.

In the end what you need to understand is that these investment instruments of the ultra-rich are driving up prices and sucking money out of the pockets of the working class through higher gas prices just as sure as if they connected a vacuum cleaner to your wallet.

Integrated oil companies can still make money in this situation of course but many independent players can easily find themselves on the wrong end (typically one end of the oil business is up while the other is down, upstream vs. downstream.) Locally Hovensa is an independent (JV) and unfortunately is stuck in the wrong side of the business (refining) where margins have been negative for a long time now.

Maybe after the Obama administration has got a handle on the economy, war on terror, and healthcare they can focus on giving regulators some teeth they lost during the Bush administration to mitigate the risks of speculation. Basic commodities like food, medical, and fuel should not be manipulated by speculators.

(Of course Obama is the 'green' President which only works when oil is high in cost so maybe he has a reason to drag his feet here...)

I read about this recently on cnn and yahoo news and I think this is where are paper butchered the story, we really have awful newspapers. The price of gas is going up the summer everywhere even though the gas/oil sales are down everywhere. Its not wapa deciding to raise the prices of their service willy nilly, the price of oil is going up because OPEC has decide to raise even those there is not as great of demand for it this summer.

It awful news either way I was expecting this.

so whom would need to be pressured in ordered for an independent audit to be done of wapa like they did at the hospitol on STT?

Good to go thanks for the information. The articles I read did not mention wall street but that's very interesting. I really hope oil does get a boost simply so Hovensa can start hiring instead of firing.

Wapa has done everything in their power to stop alternative energy so that they can keep their profits up. Almost any state in the union allows connection to the grid by an individual owner but not WAPA.

billd

Ummm, no.

WAPA does allow a net metered connection and you can be grid tied. In fact the system here is better than mainland in some ways. Any power you produce they will credit you at the EXACT same rate you pay, unlike most mainlad that only allowsbuyback at wholesale rate.

Here they credit you if you are produing more than you use. They only drawback is you cant build a HUGE PV systems and expect checks back. The key is to size your system correctly, its fantastic.

Read here www.VIENERGY.ORG

Silly question time.

You have a 50 megawatt power plant sitting idle across from Hovensa and Hovensa has inexpensive fuel for said power plant.

Why not use it?

Is this at Renaissance? Is it the coker fired boiler for which I saw an annoucement of a permit application in the paper a few months ago?

Silly question time.

You have a 50 megawatt power plant sitting idle across from Hovensa and Hovensa has inexpensive fuel for said power plant.

Why not use it?

Check out http://www.virenewableenergy.org/

Coal and PET Coke (td), we will just be in the same situation we are in today with oil. Plus....I would feel bad for anyone living downwind to the west of renaissance. Can you say cancer?

"Why not use it?"

Because neither WAPA nor Hovensa work that way.

"Why not use it?"

Because neither WAPA nor Hovensa work that way.

They say they want to sell PET coke.....
http://www.onepaper.com/stcroixvi/?v=d&i=&s=Commentary:Open+Forum&p=1222834023

Silly question time.

You have a 50 megawatt power plant sitting idle across from Hovensa and Hovensa has inexpensive fuel for said power plant.

Why not use it?

Check out http://www.virenewableenergy.org/

Coal and PET Coke (td), we will just be in the same situation we are in today with oil. Plus....I would feel bad for anyone living downwind to the west of renaissance. Can you say cancer?

For every dollar you lower consumption sounds like WAPA gonna want two in rate increases...
You cannot go 100% alternative energy sources w/o some unimagined at this time storage method.
Use delta T from ocean water? What are the long term consequences of disrupting the thermocline - does anyone know?
How abotu messing with the food chain?
Wind gennies kill birds.
Solar causes micro-climate hot spots.
Nothing is perfect but you need to survive while you work out these issues.

Hovensa says many things, but getting Hovensa and WAPA to work together is another matter.

As I understand it coke is a 'dirty' product but it shouldn't matter from an EPA perspective as they simply require operators to spend a LOT more on things like stack scrubbers to meet EPA emission standards. Net-net, coke as a supply is cheaper, your physical infrastructure costs may be higher to clean up the emissions, and the public should tell no difference in air quality given strict EPA controls. My knowledge here is academic (purely from reading online and what a local person told me) so someone let me know where I may be off please.

Silly question time.

You have a 50 megawatt power plant sitting idle across from Hovensa and Hovensa has inexpensive fuel for said power plant.

Why not use it?

Check out http://www.virenewableenergy.org/

Coal and PET Coke (td), we will just be in the same situation we are in today with oil. Plus....I would feel bad for anyone living downwind to the west of renaissance. Can you say cancer?

Were I made king I would invite Hovensa to bid on a long term power contract.
They are in biz to make money and they are already running a large facility and generating their own power so why not generate more power and sell and profit from it?

BTY I have spent time in Brasil, ABC isles, BVI, and USVI and read Don't Stop the Carnival several times and I no illusions or desire to try to change things....and on the boat we make our own water and power . I do enjoy chewing the rag tho 😉