Captain Obvious

This recent article title for a Public Utilities Fortnightly editorial reminded me of where we are in our relationships to energy consumers.  A lot has changed about how we think about the business and how consumers think about their energy choices.

Read the Public Utilities article here.

You will no doubt get caught up in the numbers because they are certainly interesting, and probably happily wear out your muscles patting the industry on the back for its impressive improvements in the energy efficiency of devices in the home, but you will then miss the big message here.

At one time, it was considered a luxury to have these things.  That has moved to more of an expectation that you SHOULD have these things.  You can still get along without AC in Los Angeles but you won’t in all likelihood.  You can, and we did, go without AC here in Atlanta when Susan and I were first married.  We used a whole house fan and it was OK.

But, expectations change and comfort and convenience trumps the other cards in the deck.  Today, you can’t build a house in Georgia without AC and expect to get a mortgage.

We really need to rethink the regulatory premises for affordable energy going forward given all the changes in technology.  Maybe we aren’t really thinking this through.

 

If you look up the definition of dialogue in common language, you find it is a conversation between two or more people with the intent of exchanging ideas or opinions on a particular issue.  The intent is supposedly to reach amicable agreement, settlement, and possibly some “middle ground.”

The term weaponized is generally associated with germ or chemical warfare where the basic idea is that something that will kill or at least immobilize the enemy is concentrated so much that it can be delivered as a lethal strike in combat.

Now, some of you must be thinking, “Why did Joel come up with this combination of words now?”

Well, it all started about two weeks ago when I brought out a toaster that was given to us as a gift for buying appliances during our house renovation.  Let’s just say that it is an industrial strength, heavy, solid stainless steel monster.  Our son Stephen came into the room as I was using it for the first time and declared it “a weaponized toaster that could probably put the toast into low orbit when done.”

Obviously, he was trying to be cute in his usual Big Bang Theory style smarty-pants way.  I just can’t figure out where he gets that.  But, that stuck with me all day and became central to how I started to think about our communication style today.  Our language styles have moved from just being helpful (making tasty toast) to winning wars in our own minds … and leaving a lot of dead bodies in our paths.

Think about the news cycle for a moment and watch it with this idea in mind.  Is there an exchange of ideas with the intent to reach amicable agreement?  Or, is it a take no prisoners exchange.  Did Megan Kelly really want an explanation from Donald Trump about his thoughts or was she lobbing a grenade to improve her image and value?  Did President Obama hope to gain anything when he called Russian President Putin a thug?

It seems we are making increasingly bad choices about the way we conduct ourselves.  We can label this polarization and call it out as a bad thing, or we can look deep within ourselves and look a bit more critically about how we add fuel to this unhealthy fire.

We need to stop the arms race.  We have to cool our jets and seek not just middle ground, but potentially higher ground in our dialogue.  There is a better way.  Seems we have based our calendar on the person who made this the central idea of his life 2000 years ago.

Doesn’t anyone remember the “Golden Rule?”  Do unto others, as you would have others do unto you.  Yep, your right, that same guy said it … over and over again.

 

Does that sound strange to you?  Is it possibly a bad idea to come up with something that is more efficient because it causes more people to use it or the same people to use something more often?  Maybe so, according to this article posted by the Wall Street Journal.

How do we think critically about things like this?  The reactions to this blog are telling.  Is the ultimate goal to keep consumption under control or to be sure we are as efficient as we can be about producing goods and services?  Do we believe the quality of life is important, or should everyone live in the dark and huddle together to stay warm?

Why aren’t we having this conversation?

 

 

I do not follow sports, as you no doubt have learned from my blogs.  Perhaps that is because Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where I went to college set the record for most consecutive losses in football.  I graduated with my first master’s degree having never experienced a winning game, even when we brought in an all-girls college that had just gone coed and formed a football team.  They beat us as well … by a wide margin as I remember.

We got used to losing.  We still showed up at games and cheered for our side.  Of course, our cheers were geeky as well, routinely including the digits to the irrational number Pi.

So, I am puzzled when I watch sports today and fail to see any level of grace and

sportsmanship.  And, I am especially puzzled when the lack of sportsmanship goes viral, as it appears to have done in basketball.   For example, why on earth would we condone scenes like this during the basketball game?  When did the rules get rewritten that distracting players was part of the game?  Why don’t I ever hear complaints?  Where is the sense of sportsmanship?

We do seem to get more upset about the team’s name, especially if it has tribal roots.  I guess birds don’t have any rights, so Ravens and Hawks are safe … but if they learn to speak I fear those will be out as well.  Yet we condone scenes like the one pictured above.

Tennis still seems to insist on decorum.  The judge can quiet the crowd and, during the point, no one is allowed to do anything that might be a distraction.  That seems right to me.  But, then again, tennis is a game that is not generally followed like basketball, football, or baseball.

The masses seem to behave badly.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the election cycle follows the same lack of sportsmanship.  Maybe we Americans have lost our sense of it.

Susan and I were traveling recently and found some really cheap airfares.

However, as we soon found out, these seats came along with some limitations.  For example, we were not able to choose our seats (until everyone who paid the high price exercised their choices).  The seats also came with less legroom.  Forget about using my multi-million miler status to upgrade … but who cares anyway when the number of people with even more miles than I have is enormous now.   And, by accepting this lower fare, we forfeited the right to catch an earlier flight even if we were willing to stand by for it.

Perhaps there is something to be learned here for our industry.  Maybe, just maybe, the historical basis for rates and rate design needs to consider something far different from what our founding fathers conceived.  Maybe Edison was right, his concern that no one would ever want to buy electricity because people had no idea what it was … he suggested selling light and heat.  Doing that would make it intrinsically attractive to the providers to use cost-effective efficiency measures.

If customers really want low prices, perhaps they should have to compromise choice, comfort, convenience, and control.  Lots of Cs at work here.  But maybe this set of attributes permits us to truly rethink the electricity industry.  After all, if you want comfort, you probably want to keep your home cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  If you want the lowest price, perhaps you have to give up some or even all of that.

Maybe the costs of service concepts needs to be designed to reflect the value of service.  If you value convenience, you should be willing to pay more for it.

 

Just trying to help …