Power Company Woes

In this neck of the woods APS or Arizona Public Service, is pretty much the power company for Navajo county, a county in which I have a lot of my listings, and the county I live in. Over the past year or so, APS has changed some things about how they do business with the public.

Here's the background: When buying vacant land in which you're planning to build on, APS used to give 1000 feet of power line free of charge to help new customers get power to their property. If you needed more than that to get power where you could use it, you would have to pay for construction costs for anything more than that 1000 feet.

That's all changed. Now the customer is paying for anything needed to get power to the home. Right now even if you have power running along the front of your property, you'll be charged for the transformer, as well as any needed cable for the "drop down". I don't have any figures on what you're looking at here, because APS won't give out any figures until you as the customer pay them a $100 deductible for an estimate.

I'm really not trying to make APS look bad here, but this is what's going on, and I think everyone should know about it. APS is working to have 15% of their power supplied from alternative power sources by the year 2025. My thinking is someone has to pay for this. I'm sure we'll all get to pay for it with our taxes, but I'm also sure we as customers are going to get to pay for it with our rates as well. You also have to wonder if this is the reason for their policy with new customers.

At some point you have to ask yourself if it would be smart to pay for APS to bring you power, only to be strapped with a monthly bill for the rest of your life. Having your own alternative power might be a viable option don't you think? To be fair, I don't know what an alternative power system would cost, or how many appliances I'd be able to use if I were on solar power. I do know that at some point if the rates continue to climb, buying power won't be an option for some, and maybe for many people, depending on what happens with this economy.

This is where the Arizona Corporation Commission, who were created for the purpose of monitoring "the quality of service and rates charged by public service utilities", this is where they're supposed to be going to bat for us right? Maybe not. I for one think I should start paying more attention to who I vote for in the ACC.

It's this unrealistic mentality that's bringing this great country to it's knees. Maybe that's a good thing though. We've been kicking God out of every aspect of our lives for a while now. Maybe if things get tough enough we'll turn to Him in our personal lives, then maybe we'll see the importance of having Him back where he belongs in our schools, businesses, courthouses, and in Washington DC.

If you're associated with APS and you're reading this, and if you see something here that isn't correct, please leave a comment here, or you can contact me. This is true for anyone really, I've been wrong before, and if you think I'm wrong again, that's exactly why I left space at the end of this post.

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