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A Place to Hide by Doug Gentry Seattle Times, April 17, 2011

After reading this story, it makes me wonder and maybe re-evaluate a few thoughts ["Wind-power producers fight turbine shutdown," NWWednesday, April 13].

For years, we've heard about conserving. Buy lower-wattage bulbs, get restrictors for your shower, only take two-minute showers, install new toilets that only flush with two shots glasses of water.

Buy more fuel-efficient cars, drive less, keep your tires inflated and drive like you have an egg under your accelerator. And for gosh's sake, take the bus.

Conserve. Conserve. Conserve. Conserve.

So here it is years later. I have my heat turned off and all the bulbs are now the little screw-in fluorescent bulbs. My family is huddled around one light bulb in the evening trying to stay warm; we wash our clothes once a week in a water tub of cold rainwater; we use what sun we can get to dry our clothes. During the winter we can just crack the ice off them to help dry them faster.

Now the only problem I see is the more we conserve, the more we pay. I keep seeing our rates increase. I can look over the years at our records and see that I've used less and less power but I'm continually getting charged more and more.

The BPA said it had so much water they had to run all the extra through the turbine and just give the power away for free.

I don't ever remember seeing my power bill get a credit because the power company got free power.

I swear, I'd just like to go find a deserted island somewhere and go hide.

Related Pages:
PSE's Lower Snake River Wind Project to Boost Power Generation by Cameron Chai, Clean Tech, 4/15/11
Bonneville Power may Shut Down Wind Turbines to Protect Salmon by John Laumer, Treehugger, 4/14/11
Grid Problems Trigger Rolling Wind-Farm Outages in Pacific NW by William Pentland, Forbes, 4/14/11
Wind Turbines Shutdown Possible by David Mance, KAPP TV, 4/13/11
Wind-Power Producers Fight Possible Shutdown of Turbines by Hal Bernton, The Spokesman-Review, 4/10/11
Bonneville Power Plan Creates Buzz in Industry by Bert Caldwell, The Spokesman-Review, 4/10/11