I think your missing my point. There are no power companys to choose from. CL&P and UI are both the same company. CL&P is a branch from UI. You may be able to use different companys as your biller but all power comes from one company and that one company is the one that maintains the lines.
I understand your point. But I am trying to explain to you why this problem exists and what isn't going to fix the problem.
Put it like this. A pizza restaraunt fails to maintain their oven and it breaks down. The pizza restaraunt won't charge you $80 for a pizza because they need money to fix what broke.
Of course it will. Every bit of their overhead is built into the price of everything they sell.
CL&P does basicly nothing to maintain their infrastructure and instead reacts when things go wrong. They just sit back and collect their money. It only costs the power company tons of cash to repair failures because they havent done maintence basicly ever. If over the years they did trim trees and maintained their equipment better it would be a lot less money spread over a long time that would keep their customers happy. Thats the funny thing about preventitive maintence, it prevents large scale problems from occuring.
See, this is where you are having trouble understanding. I don't think you are actually reading what I am writing, but instead you are simply repeating the same thing over and over.
Lets use your pizza analogy.
You own a pizzeria. You get to charge whatever you want for your pizzas (as you should) and your customers get to choose either to pay for your pizza or not to pay for your pizza. So your decision in what to charge for your pizza already has real world limits and checks built into the market for pizza in your locality. For instance, you know:
- Similar pizza in your area is going for an average price of $9 for a small cheese pizza.
- You expect to sell an average of 100 pizzas a day.
- You have $700 per day in overhead.
With that kind of rudimentary accounting, you know you will have roughly $200 per day in profit.
Maintenance, repairs, sudden costs need to be factored into that overhead and you must adjust your price to make sure you are always making money and not losing money.
Now, lets say that the citizens of our fine state start to complain that $9 is far too much to pay for a pizza. They insist the state 'fixes' this egregious injustice. The state now makes a law that puts a 'Department of Cheesy Saucy Circles' (DCSC) together. DCSC is charged with regulating the prices of pizza. They make a policy that every small cheese pizza in the state should cost $6. They don't do anything to actually change the cost with producing the pizza. In fact, the United Pizza Dough Spinning Union (UPDSU) has lobbied the state successfully and your pizza dough spinners are now making 20% more than what they were making last year and you are now required to provide them all 2 weeks sick time where they had 1 week previously.
Your overhead is now $800 per day, and you (luckily) still sell the same amount of pizza per day. Things are much more difficult now. You only have $100 per day in profit now.
Many competitors die off because they cannot hang on. Their pizza ovens need serious overhaul, but they were not able to afford to upgrade them. They might have chosen to get the new Super Duty pizza ovens on a loan, but they would not have been able to convince the DCSC that their better, more delicious pizzas would have sold better and would have been worth more to their customers justifying pricing their pizza at $8 per pizza. The DCSC claims they know what the customers want more than the pizzerias though. Your prices must stay at the 'fair' price of $6.
Before long, you have no competitors. You are the only pizzeria in the state. You do not know how you held in this long. You actually wish you had some competition, because there is a line out the door and around the block at all hours for your pizza. You have hired on twice as many workers, you have streamlined your pizza production as much as possible. But your single, simple pizza oven that was designed to push out 100 pizzas per day is now pushing out 600 pizzas per day. You are working very long hours, and you have had to insist that your employees work as many hours as possible as well. The UPDSU is now pushing you harder and threatening strikes. But you know your customers cannot live without their pizza. So you give into their constant demands. You have had to hire off duty police to manage the unruly mobs of people who are angry because of your now poor customer service.
Your overhead is now $2400 per day. You are bringing in $3600 per day in revenue. You make investments where you can, but to upgrade your pizza ovens and facilities to make more pizzas and better pizzas with better customer service, it would cost you millions of dollars. You need a building, a dozen super duty pizza ovens, you need enough staff to handle this volume, and you need a full pizza oven maintenance crew to cover these ovens. You are sure your customers would be willing to pay the $8 per small cheese pizza that it would take to upgrade so that you could provide them hot, steamy, melty pizza that is gourmet and not at all rushed, but just right. You know that your customers hate to wait in what has turned into a line that rivals the Soviet-era bread lines.
You have done research and you know that every day you lose at least 50% of your potential customers because they get frustrated and walk away from the hours long wait. You know you can keep your overhead to about $7500, but supply twice as many pizzas, twice as fast and put smiles on the faces of all of your customers. So you go to the DCSC. You tell them you need to raise the price of your pizza. The DCSC says that they know the only fair price for a pizza is $6. The customers would have a fit to pay more for their pizza, they say. So you continue on.
Soon, your pizza oven fails in a spectacular way. You are going to have to invest in a new Super Duty oven. But you know that the cost of the oven over the next few years is going to be too much in your overhead. You will either have to shut your pizza place down or you will have to get a higher pizza price. You once again go to the DCSC. You tell them your story. The DCSC knows they will be the focus of a lot of consumer rage when the only pizzeria in CT shuts its doors. They agree to give you an increase. You are now able to charge $7 per small cheese pizza. You buy your new oven and you can now get by, but with a much smaller profit margin.
What have you learned as a pizzeria?