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BronsCon
join:2003-10-24
Fairfield, CA

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Re: Good

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As reference for my claim that I pay above and beyond the cost of generation: Bill breakdown showing generation, transmission, a

As reference for my claim that I pay above and beyond the cost of generation: Bill breakdown showing generation, transmission, a
said by BiggA:

You're making your numbers less and less believable every time you try and defend your numbers.

What's unbelievable about my numbers? Are you saying Comcast doesn't have 30 million customers? Or that it's unreasonable to assume (absent any real data from Comcast) that half of those 30 million customers subscribe to internet and rent a modem, and half of those 15 million have the device that's been Comcast's "golden" gateway for the past 3 years? Or maybe you're claiming that it's unreasonable to assume that only a handful of a customer base that largely either doesn't know or doesn't care that Comcast is doing this would have disabled it? Beyond that, we've already more or less agreed on how to calculate the additional usage, based on my worst-case 100%, which I then adjusted for your suggested 30% use case.
said by BiggA:

Isn't the price of electricity regulated at the state PUC/DPUC level? In which case, the rates would be set at that level?

Ahh, I see, what's unbelievable to you is the rate I pay for electricity. The rates on my current bill range from $0.15293/kWh to $0.26445/kWh, with usage below a certain threshold being charged a lower rate and usage exceeding that threshold being charged a higher rate. It doesn't matter that lower rates are available, nor that the majority of my usage was billed at the lower rate. What matters is that the *unwanted* usage would increase the *overall* usage, thereby increasing the usage at the higher rate tier; therefore, only the highest rate tier present on my bill should be considered, and that is $0.26445/kWh.

So, it appears that the problem here is that you're attempting to call out the blatant lie I'm so obviously telling about my electric rates. Well, here it is, direct from my bill; your move.
BronsCon

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Making a separate post for this, as the other turned out to be quite lengthy including the images.
said by BiggA:

The spectrum usage doesn't change, since it's still using one 2.4ghz channel and one 5ghz channel.

The spectrum usage most certainly does change as you add users. Given your prior assertion that it would be used maybe 30% of the time, you're admitting there will be additional users, and there is a nontrivial amount of ongoing transmission overhead required just to stay connected to an AP. Even if we assume the Xfinitiwifi signal goes unused indefinitely, it still sends out a beacon every 100ms or so, which I'll grant you has a minimal (but nonzero) impact. Multiply that by the 40 or so Xfinitiyfi APs I can see from where I'm sitting right now and that nonzero impact becomes *even less* zero.
BronsCon

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My captions got all screwed up... even after I deleted and re-uploaded the images with new captions. The first should read "Details of electric charges, showing the tiers at which I am billed and usage at each tier" and the second should read "Bill breakdown showing transmission and distribution rates, calculated as a percentage of the cost of generation"
BiggA
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What is unbelievable are your claims about additional power draw due to the xfinitywifi SSID just sitting there.

Oh, you're over your limit, that's why that rate seems so crazy. I see the logic of that in your specific case, but it's not a realistic number to use to apply to other people, since the whole point of the weird multi-tier punitive California system (which I still don't understand how the heck they figure out what the baseline is supposed to be) is that you're supposed to stay well short of the point where you get kicked to the second tier. That system is so bizarre, and sounds like a total nightmare to administer. OTOH, I wish we had more than one rate, just based on demand and time. The best would be if the rate changed every 15 minutes based on demand to try and move demand around to better fit the available generation, although it may not matter at this point, since they have beefed our grid up significantly, and a larger chunk than ever before comes from gas turbines, which can be switched on and off in a relatively short amount of time to meet the demand curves.

BronsCon
join:2003-10-24
Fairfield, CA

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Check out the PG&E website sometime: »pge.com

There are a number of rate schemes, it's really freakin' insane. And, although my apartment is all electric so I get the "all electric" rates, there is gas run to the building (used by the water heaters, shared by all units) so I'm stuck on the gas-heating tier schedule so my "limit", as you put it, is much lower than it should be.

Interestingly, my heater is less efficient than my AC, so my usage actually goes up in the winter, but my rate goes down to compensate (and if the building didn't have a gas hookup, so would my tier schedule).
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I never said 30% usage. Most of these will never be used. If the channel is on channel 1, it's on channel 1, and that's not really available for anyone else in the area to use. It doesn't matter how many SSIDs are running on it. If you're in a dense area, where every channel has multiple APs on it, sure, those additional devices will create some more interference while they are operating, but so would any wifi usage on any SSID on any of the APs on that channel. That's the nature of unlicensed spectrum, and that doesn't "use" any more spectrum per se.

At the point that you can see 40 APs, 2.4ghz is such a mess that nothing works very well. I've experienced an area where I could see over 50, and nothing worked very well. Luckily, that situation was in a college dorm, and has since been fixed by the university putting their own wireless in, which more or less bans individual wifi APs, and no one bothers anyway if they have school wifi available.
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Are you using a heat pump to heat? That's kind of a crazy method of doing things, as every building is going to be different based on so many more factors than what their fuel source is. I get the concept behind it, but it sounds like a complete nightmare to actually do.

BronsCon
join:2003-10-24
Fairfield, CA

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said by BiggA:

If you're in a dense area, where every channel has multiple APs on it

You mean like an interior (facing thr courtyard) unit of a 150 unit, concrete-faced, apartment building that wraps around a courtyard atop a small mountain in the middle of Silicon Valley? That's exactly where I am.
said by BiggA:

At the point that you can see 40 APs, 2.4ghz is such a mess that nothing works very well.

And you refuse to address the point where I said that I personally know at least half of those are wired-only users who could (and should) disable wireless altogether. Of course, since it doesn't affect them, they don't care. And, as I said earlier, I really can't blame them; I don't call Comcast if *I* don't have to, either.
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said by BiggA:

Are you using a heat pump to heat? That's kind of a crazy method of doing things, as every building is going to be different based on so many more factors than what their fuel source is. I get the concept behind it, but it sounds like a complete nightmare to actually do.

I suppose you've never rented an apartment? You use what's installed in the unit, period.

Around here, that's resistive element wall heaters and, if you're lucky, you'll get one with a blower. If you're *really* lucky, you'll have resistive element baseboard heaters in the rooms that can be closed off from the main area, so you still have heat with the door closed (I *am* that lucky, but I keep those breakers *off* since I don't keep doors closed for lengthy periods of time). Of course, there are gas heated apartments available around here, but you pay more in rent for a unit with gas heat than you save in heating costs, by at least two orders of magnitude.

IowaCowboy
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They read the meters twice a month there?

I'm glad I dont live in California. It makes Massachusetts look cheap.

BronsCon
join:2003-10-24
Fairfield, CA

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They read the meters every 15 minutes here (which allows you to monitor your usage and bill in near real time via their website) and the tier usage is calculated by calendar month, even if your billing is (like mine) mid-month. They do *NOT* make the math easy to follow and if you're not looking at the previous month's bill alongside the current bill, you absolutely cannot be sure they've calculated the tiers correctly.

That said, the one time I caught them screwing it up, they forgot to subtract my beginning of the month usage from my tier 1 allotment in the following billing cycle, so it worked out to my favor. If they ever screw it up in *their* favor, I'll allow it up to the same dollar amount before I call them on it.
jjeffeory
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I described the rates above a couple of weeks ago. Glad you posted a bill excerpt to back that up. It's crazy.

BronsCon
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Isn't it? And my tiers allowances *should* be higher as my address (building+unit) is all electric, as is every other unit in this building. But, since the *building* has gas, I get the gas+electric tiers, despite their acknowledgment that I'm all electric in the rates they charge me at each tier.

That's probably something the PUC should look into but, given that it'd only cut my bill by less than $10/mo (about 12 billable minutes for me) and I value my personal time more highly than my billable time, the break-even point (for me writing that letter, sending it, reading the reply, following up, lather, rinse, repeat, until I actually get a result) is at least several years after I'm likely to have moved out of this place anyway.
BronsCon

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said by BiggA:

I never said 30% usage.

Right, my mistake, that actually came from this post in another thread on the same topic: »Re: Sorry, I Don'e See The Big Deal

I have to admit I got a bit turned around by having two people argue with me over my own electric bill in two separate threads.
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said by BronsCon:

And you refuse to address the point where I said that I personally know at least half of those are wired-only users who could (and should) disable wireless altogether. Of course, since it doesn't affect them, they don't care. And, as I said earlier, I really can't blame them; I don't call Comcast if *I* don't have to, either.

I highly doubt that there are many wired-only users. In fact, most people have only one or no wired devices, and access everything through Wifi, computers, smartphones, tablets, game consoles, etc.
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said by BronsCon:

I suppose you've never rented an apartment? You use what's installed in the unit, period.

Around here, that's resistive element wall heaters and, if you're lucky, you'll get one with a blower. If you're *really* lucky, you'll have resistive element baseboard heaters in the rooms that can be closed off from the main area, so you still have heat with the door closed (I *am* that lucky, but I keep those breakers *off* since I don't keep doors closed for lengthy periods of time). Of course, there are gas heated apartments available around here, but you pay more in rent for a unit with gas heat than you save in heating costs, by at least two orders of magnitude.

Yeah, I rented a place with electric baseboards. It's just weird to have them in a place where it doesn't get that cold, and there is a lot of AC load. Usually places like that use heat pump/AC combos.

Electric

BronsCon
join:2003-10-24
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Coming from the northeast (Ohio born, lived in Michigan for half my childhood, then back to Ohio in my 20's, only been in CA for about 4 years now), you're right, it doesn't get that cold here. Natives think I'm insane walking around in a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals this time of year; many of them bundle up like northeasterners in winter. They definitely use the heat here, for at least half the year.

My wife being from Washington and me being from Ohio, we usually keep the apartment what most CA natives would consider uncomfortably cold in the winter, but somewhat warmer than most would like in the summer. We used to have to keep it somewhat warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer when we had guinea pigs, as they're very temperature-sensitive animals, but the last of them passed away in October and, while he'll be missed, the increased heating/cooling costs won't be.

I think I misunderstood your post, though. I read it as you saying it would be crazy to use a heat pump in CA; now that I've read your follow-up, I see that you were referring to the rate/tier system. My apologies for the misunderstanding. And yes, it's crazy; however, if implemented correctly, with both rates and tiers (rather than just rates) being tied to which services you actually use, it would be a great system. And PG&E, being a unified supplier of both gas and electricity, knows which services are active at which addresses, so they *could* do it.

Hell, Detroit Edison was able to manage all-electric rates and heating credits during the winter months for homes with electric heat, and they actually had to verify with the gas company (Consumer's Energy) that no gas service was active at the address. That meant that, even if your building had gas run to it, if you didn't use it you got the all-electric credits. I don't know if they still do that, but I know they did as recently as a decade ago.
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said by BiggA:

I highly doubt that there are many wired-only users.

Doubt all you want, these are people that I know personally, as I've said several times now; and our apartments, at least the ones that have been remodeled, are wired for ethernet, so having the Xbox and AppleTV in the living room and the PC in the bedroom is a non-issue.
jjeffeory
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I know what you mean. I hate having to call into places so they can fix their mistakes. If we could bill them for our time, it would be less frustrating.

The bills as SCE are very close to what you've shown. You can not run an AC and keep under the first tier. It's really bad for those who live Inland in the dessert where it goes up to 110 much of the year. Just robbery.
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Yeah, here in New England, I'm used to it being 55-62 inside in the winter and 78 during the day in the summer, the seasons come and the seasons go, and it's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. I'd rather have the cold than the heat though, I can always throw on a hoodie if I'm cold, but there's only so much I can take off when it's hot!

No, I thought that they would use a heat pump instead of electric resistance, since they are so much more efficient, and old heat pump designs should work fine in that climate, whereas around here, it's only recently that we've gotten heat pump designs that will work on a bitterly cold New England winter night. And in warmer climates, the good air source heat pumps will achieve COPs of at least 2.5 or higher, depending on the unit and the climate. Now that heat pumps will work in Boston or Detroit or Chicago, they are truly the future of heating and cooling. The last This Old House project used on in Boston that is supposedly more cost effective than gas heating, and provides heat and AC. All that being said, it sounds like with the punitive electric rates there may be a huge disincentive to using high-efficiency heat pumps unless you get a big enough "allotment" of power at the lowest tier to run it without going over into the next tier.

They do some weird sh*t in Detroit. My grandparents live in the Detroit suburbs, in a senior living community, where electric and geothermal heat is handled through their complex along with basic cable from BHN (they pay BHN the additional cost for HD triple play), but they used to live in a house, and they had some weird system where they had a separate electric meter for the hot water heater or something. What was even weirder is that they had natural gas, but the electric company still did this separate meter thing with a different rate. I don't see why there should be all-electric rates. We don't have them here, and people who have electric heat go through a ton of kwh. It doesn't get significantly cheaper to deliver those additional kwh, so they should pay the same rate per kwh that everyone else pays. At 22 cents/kwh, hopefully people with electric resistance in their own house will give the local Mitsubishi Electric of Fujitsu dealer a call to buy some high efficiency mini-split heat pumps! I've heard of $1k/mo electric bills in a particularly cold February, and that's before the price increase!

However, if the building has gas, wouldn't you have gas? From what I've seen, buildings are either all-electric, gas forced air heat with electric hot water, or gas forced air heat with gas hot water. I've heard of one building built with gas condensing boilers in each unit and hydronic radiant/instant hot water, but I think that is an outlier. The worst are the places that were converted at some point to electric from something else when they were condo-ized or apartments split off in houses and such, as those weren't built for electric, and are horribly inefficient all around.
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I still doubt that. Even with hardwired Ethernet, you've got streaming sticks, Apple TV (which misbehaves on Ethernet, I had to unplug mine and switch to 5G wireless), iPads, smartphones, laptops, etc.

BronsCon
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Part of the problem is installing 150 individual heat pumps in a single building. They're great for single family homes and smaller MDUs but not really a solution for anything over 10 units or so in a building.

The gas is only plumbed to the room the water heaters are in and not to all 150 units. With the frequency of plumbing issues in this building, I'd call that a good thing.

Regarding your persistent doubts (from your other post), no, these people literally don't use their wireless. If they did, I wouldn't say they didn't. Also, no problems whatsoever with my AppleTV (or my NeoTV) via ethernet for the past 2 years, so I have no idea WTF you're talking about there. The NeoTV is wireless now only because I now have 2 internet connections (one just for streaming devices and consoles, the other for business use) and the business connection gets priority so that's what's hooked up to the in-wall ethernet, and the NeoTV is on the other side of the apartment from the router it is connecting to.
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Why are they that hard? In many parts of the world, every single unit in multi-hundred-unit buildings have mini splits, with the outdoor units mounted in brackets against the buildings. I've seen pictures online of MDUs even in the US with Mitsubishi Electric heat pumps installed that way. I and I've seen air conditioning compressors installed on balconies. If AC compressors can go there, heat pumps would work just as well. I've also seen buildings with central A/C in each apartment, and if they can do that, then they can replace those units with high efficiency heat pumps.

The Apple TV refuses to update via Ethernet, but works fine on Wifi. I googled it, and it's not just me. I really doubt that they don't use their wireless for anything. How do their phones and iPads and such get online?

BronsCon
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said by BiggA:

The Apple TV refuses to update via Ethernet, but works fine on Wifi.

Huh, funny, mine's never been connected to wireless and it's running 7.0.2, the latest according to Apple: »support.apple.com/en-us/HT202157

A quick Google search does show that this issue has cropped up more than a handful of times; meanwhile, I have a friend with the exact opposite problem, he can't get his on of his AppleTVs to work worth a damn via wireless, and it's the one he had in his bedroom, on the other side of the apartment from his router; he swapped it with the one from the living room (and that unit is now connected via ethernet) and it's all good now.

Defects are understandably common given that the CPUs used in AppleTV are iPhone and iPad CPUs with one or more bad cores (which they disable), as long as at least one core is good. It's a better solution than throwing the chips out, I suppose.
said by BiggA:

How do their phones and iPads and such get online?

3g and LTE. I figure that'd be a given for phones and it's been an option on the iPad since the very first model. I didn't think I had to spell that out for you, quite honestly, which is why I never addressed it before now.
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said by BronsCon:

Huh, funny, mine's never been connected to wireless and it's running 7.0.2, the latest according to Apple: »support.apple.com/en-us/HT202157

Could be some specific conditions that cause it to go haywire. I gave up on Ethernet. I prefer hardwired, but I figure that 5ghz wifi is probably more than enough bandwidth for an AppleTV anyway.
said by BronsCon:

3g and LTE. I figure that'd be a given for phones and it's been an option on the iPad since the very first model. I didn't think I had to spell that out for you, quite honestly, which is why I never addressed it before now.

Why would anyone use up their data package with slower cellular connectivity when they can use wifi? And most iPads either don't have 3G/4G, or they don't have active SIMs in them. That's just nuts. Why don't they bother to type their wireless password into the thing to get it on wifi?

BronsCon
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Well, I can tell you from experience that my phone's LTE is 2.5x faster than my DSL's downstream and about 40x faster on the upstream. It's about on par with my 50/10 cable, but still about 4x the upstream. And, since it's unlimited (and costs less than either the cable or DSL) I see no reason to connect to my wifi and use that bandwidth when I've got a plentiful supply from my wireless provider. Maybe my neighbors have decent wireless providers, too?

I'm sorry if wireless providers suck in your neck of the woods; rest assured that's not the case everywhere. You can see where I live, google the place and tell me if you think anyone living here wouldn't spend the extra $100 for the LTE option on their iPad.
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said by BronsCon:

Well, I can tell you from experience that my phone's LTE is 2.5x faster than my DSL's downstream and about 40x faster on the upstream. It's about on par with my 50/10 cable, but still about 4x the upstream. And, since it's unlimited (and costs less than either the cable or DSL) I see no reason to connect to my wifi and use that bandwidth when I've got a plentiful supply from my wireless provider. Maybe my neighbors have decent wireless providers, too?

Most people don't have Unlimited, and only Verizon Unlimited allows extreme usage without any consequences. And LTE is targeted to be between 5 and 12mbps, whereas cable is usually 50-300mbps. LTE can, at times, be much faster than 5 to 12mbps, but it's usually not consistent either.

Since cable is generally totally unlimited, it's a much better option.

BronsCon
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Fairfield, CA

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T-Mobile. They only *threatened* consequences for users who were bypassing limits on tethering (for which they do *not* offer unlimited) and they backed down on that. $50 for unlimited everything except LTE, $30 for unlimited LTE, and I see typical speeds of 50/40.

Meanwhile, Comcast has a 300GB cap, after which they bill in 5GB blocks for $10 each, unless you have a business connection, in which case it's probably cheaper to upgrade your phone or tablet to unlimited. If your primary form of TV entertainment is streaming from Netflix and Hulu (e.g. you don't have cable TV) it can be difficult for a heavy viewer to stay under Comcast's cap.

And who's using *that much* data on their phone or tablet, anyway? I do (between 50-200GB/mo), but that's because I use my phone as a dash cam and have it upload to youtube (as private) automatically; I do this over LTE because it saturates my upstream and kills my connection.
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Since when did Comcast roll the cap out in Cali? From what I've heard, it's only a few markets in the Southeast. Here in the Northeast, we have no caps. We do about 400-600GB in a typical month with no issues.

There are no good wireless carriers with Unlimited plans.

HOLY CRAP! That is total abuse of wireless. And that's why T-Mobile's network is going to get completely bogged down by abusive users, especially since AT&T and Verizon don't offer Unlimited anymore for people to abuse without consequences. That's also completely bizarre. Why would you want a dashcam? You don't live in Russia! Secondly, if for some crazy reason you did, why not get a dashcam that's meant to be a dashcam and has internal memory?

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I want a dahscam because people drive like shit. I also prefer not to have to remember to grab the videos that I need to keep, so having them upload automatically is a huge plus. What business it is of yours, anyway?