• Polymath@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 days ago

    Ever since I learned that pretty much all utilities are publicly-traded stocks on the stock market as for-profit companies that wealthy mfs talk about “diversifying their portfolio” with “in the energy sector” I’ve been so disturbed.

    The idea that utilities are for-profit is just so f***ed up and deranged.

      • szczuroarturo@programming.dev
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        6 days ago

        Thats the problem with internet you never really know what is allowed where. Doubly so in places like lemmy or reddit where rules depend on community

    • Overshoot2648@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      Not all at all. Lots of utilities are Consumer Cooperatives. Lots of people working at those cooperatives don’t even know that consumer and worker cooperatives are market socialist and tend to be conservative which annoys the heck out of me.

  • RagingHungryPanda@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    Nitpick: eminent domain is not the means for publicizing a company, that’s for land for public works

  • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
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    6 days ago

    Why not just use electric stove/heater/whatever? That way you’re using something that’s both cleaner, safer, and make more sense to nationalise if it haven’t.

    • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      For stoves, inductions are becoming the de-facto gold standard.

      Don’t give the gas propagandists the time of day on this issue - gas stoves have been strategically pushed as an effort to keep gas infrastructure installed across the U.S by the gas lobby.

      • Zetta@mander.xyz
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        6 days ago

        Just got an induction stove and I can’t even begin to communicate how much better it is than gas and especially old style electric stoves.

      • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 days ago

        As someone who lives where the power goes out if the wind sneezes during an ice / heavy wet snow storm, there’s reasons to have non electric sources for both cooking and heat.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          6 days ago

          Wouldn’t it be better to have a generator or something? That way you can cook still, and power other things, like a heater if you need it.

          • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 days ago

            Generator only lasts so long as you have gas for it, but yes. Been begging the landlord for one, our well pump is electric so when we lose power we lose water too.

        • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
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          6 days ago

          Sure, wood furnaces can be a good option here to not have any dependency on neither the delivery of electricity nor gas. Food that can be eaten without needing to be heated is also good from a preparedness perspective, and a trail stove is also a good idea.

          • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 days ago

            There are times where storms are so bad here that power is out for a considerable amount of time and it’s brutally cold. Relying on electric is a non starter, people would literally die from exposure.

            For most of the country it’s fine, but not for places that get deadly cold.

            Wood furnaces are nice but not every place has one. My place does not.

    • CubitOom@infosec.pub
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      6 days ago

      Although electric is great and can be self generated by things like solar panels.

      Not everyone an afford to convert a working appliance to an electric powered version. If I were to replace my boiler today for example I’d have to pay about $40,000-$60,000 USD for parts and labor. Eventually I will but I’ll have to plan and budget for it.

      There is also something to be said about reducing the waste of switching out working appliances for different fuel sources. If the goal is the help the environment, then it might be more beneficial to use the appliance until it reaches end of life. Especially of the components are hazardous or not easily recyclable.

      If something needs to be replaced, then we can advocate for electric appliances. But it’s wasteful and perhaps unreasonable to replace something that is in great condition and has years of life left in it.

      Also, there could still be legitimate uses for natural gas like for a generator incase of power outages.

      At the end of the day, the point of this post is simply that utility companies should be a service for the community and not run for profit.

      • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 days ago

        If the goal is the help the environment, then it might be more beneficial to use the appliance until it reaches end of life.

        This. Reminds me of the cash for “clunkers” debacle that took plenty of perfectly good ICE used cars off the market.

        At the end of the day, the point of this post is simply that utility companies should be a service for the community and not run for profit.

        Especially this.

      • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
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        6 days ago

        Fair point. Though my point here is swapping appliances is easier and better in every way than to nationalise a utility company.

        But then i guess i also over-analysed a meme 🙈

    • desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 days ago

      electricity is comically expensive compared to gas for heating, I understand that some places don’t consistently get to -40 every winter, but many places do.

      • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 days ago

        Heat pumps are popular in VT where it does go down to -40 somewhat regularly. Most places still have a backup heat for the really cold days - either wood stove and/or oil.

        • 1985MustangCobra@lemmy.ca
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          6 days ago

          heat pumps are great and i love the idea, but for places where it gets really cold your right that backup heat is still required.

          • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 days ago

            I’m on oil (and a renter so it’s not like I have a choice) but a friend of mine is on a heat pump and loves it. She has backup heat too, a wood stove and I believe either heating oil or gas. But most of the time she runs the heat pump and the wood stove.

            • 1985MustangCobra@lemmy.ca
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              6 days ago

              I have electric so if the power goes out it fucks up the climate control. in the winter it’s not so bad because our building gets very warm without any heating, but in the summer its killer because you need AC running 24/7 for it to even be habitable, and sometimes you need extra on top of that.

              • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                6 days ago

                Yeah, sounds like opposite environments. If you want to prep for that, you can buy a battery operated fan from one of the tool companies (dewalt, Milwaukee, etc) plus one or more of the larger batteries and then put it in front of a window with a tub of water and have the fan blow air from outside over the water into the house and it will cools things down.

          • frezik@midwest.social
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            6 days ago

            I have one in Wisconsin, and this last week has had a few exceptionally cold days. Those days, the heat pump doesn’t go at all, but most days, it does.

            Here’s what the usage looks like over the past week:

            Dark red is the furnace, light red is the heat pump. Green line is outdoor temperature, and you can see we’ve had some wild swings over the past week. Yellow line is the 71F inside temp. You can see that even on a 25F day (Dec 6), it was predominantly using the heat pump. That tends to be a fairly typical temperature in a Wisconsin winter most of the time.

      • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
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        6 days ago

        Fwiw, heat pumps are not comically expensive in operation. They also work in the north of Sweden, so I’m sure that any issues with low temperature operations have been hammered out by now.

        I understand that installation can be prohibitively expensive in some markets still though, but this is a problem that can hopefully be addressed.

        • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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          4 days ago

          Sweden has some of the cheapest electricity in all of Europe thanks to all that hydro.

          This year my final electric bill was ~ 25 c/kWh. Gas was ~ 8c/kWh (both after distribution costs, and funnily enough for electricity I pay amongst other things a fee to subsidize other people’s solar panels’ negative impact on the grid).

          Not “comically expensive” but to be cost-effective a heat pump must average a COP of at least 3.1 (which is possible in most climates with a decent enough HP), so it’s not yet a “jump on it first chance you get” kinda deal because it will take many years to recoup the initial investment. And people remember last year’s winter where the electric costs were more than doubled; gas prices tend to fluctuate much less. This makes heat pumps even more of a very long term investment for people who can afford very large surprises in their power bill… Or who have excess PV generation capacity in the winter (that requires a very large house).

          Gas is on the way out but all the political sabotage of electricity prices in Europe (nuclear phaseout, asinine financial regulations and fake competition with useless middlemen, misfiring PV legislation meaning PV owners are being subsidized by everyone else, etc.) means it will take a very long time before HP costs drop enough for people flock to replace their existing gas heater with a heat pump.

          • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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            6 days ago

            Yeah, but gas heat still requires electricity, so that argument is not a great one, though repeated often.

            Plus you can add a generator and reverse that advantage, as well as batteries. If you have an EV with a large battery that allows power out, that can be used as a good short-term solution.

          • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
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            6 days ago

            An issue for sure, but one that can be remediated by the distributed nature of local renewable production and energy storage - something that gas by its nature cannot do.

    • 1985MustangCobra@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      yeah gas stoves are sketchy but if it’s installed properly you should never have an issue. I prefer induction, fuck coil stoves. i have a electric coil stove and i fucking hate it.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 days ago

        coil stoves are okay provided they have glass tops, i have a coil stove with fucking cast iron plates on it which are IMPOSSIBLE to clean and they stay hot for ages after i’m done cooking…

        still perfectly fine to cook with, though. it’s just that anything else is even better.

        • 1985MustangCobra@lemmy.ca
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          4 days ago

          i thought coil stoves with glass on top were induction stoves? i have the coil stove with the coil exposed. its a peice of shit but i have no choice since i live in a apartment.

          • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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            3 days ago

            no, you can tell whether it’s an induction stove if it doesn’t get hot, induction stoves heat up the pot by vibrating the magnetic metal atoms in it.

            regular coil stoves are resistive, that’s why transparent-topped ones glow, the coil is literally glowing hot like an old light bulb.

  • skulkingaround@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    Tbf, my city has a publicly owned utility company and it suuuuucks. Literally writing this comment on my phone during a 12 hour power outage during perfect weather.

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      6 days ago

      Do you mean municipally owned? Publicly owned would mean it’s traded on the stock market.

      • Omniforous@mander.xyz
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        6 days ago

        Publicly owned means owned by the government. You are thinking of publicly traded companies, which are non public companies that have opened up stock ownership to the public