High energy bills

This letter is in reply to the news story you ran the other day regarding FortisBC electricity bills.
 
It’s quite obvious that FortisBC have received a large number of complaints from consumers regarding their latest electricity bill, and rightly so. FortisBC have decided to intercept the barrage of complaints about the huge increase in most people’s bills & attempt to blame it on the recent cold weather. Which I could understand if everybody used baseboard heaters & electric plug in heaters. I can’t speak for everybody, but the heating in my house runs on natural gas. OK, OK,  my furnace has an electric fan, but do you really expect me to believe that it consumes that much more electricity?
 
I make a very conscious effort to conserve energy in our house, I have installed dimmer switches on every light in the whole house, even the table lamps & floor lamps have dimmers. I have taught my kids to turn off their lights when they are not in their bedrooms, we are a family of 4 & we normally only have a couple of table lamps on at night in whatever room we are in. I turn the heating all the way down to 15 degrees at night, & use thick duvet’s on all our beds. We don’t use plug in electric heating anywhere, we don’t have baseboard heaters.
 
So why is my latest electricity bill so high? It’s because FortisBC seem to think it’s OK to bolt on lots of “extra” charges to the electricity we actually use. If you look at the “actual” used amount, it’s quite small compared to the total amount of the bill.

The cost of living in Kelowna is fast outgrowing the actually income normal people earn, what with gas prices, electricity & natural gas prices, we are being taken for a complete ride.
 
It’s no wonder that it’s fast becoming a town full of rich, retired people, because the young can’t afford to live here & neither can your average normal family with a modest income.

Ethan Shaw