This report is a
bit of a tease, but it highlights the pre – pay argument for power
distribution. It actually works for both
the company and the customer. It works the same way as mobile telephone
services work. The customer who is
financially unstable takes back direct control of when he buys power and the
supplier gets rid of the whole collection and loss cycle that arises. Both win.
Better it
induces prudent power usage habits and the company reduces delivery of
uncollectable inventory brought about by a false sense of surplus.
Other services
are likely to go onto this model. It
avoids the inconvenience of conscious budgeting for what are actually forced
bulk purchases.
Even better,
once the household battery shows up in the form of the car battery, the power
company can offer spot power sales in off times when they are running an
excess.
Energy &
Capital Crew Busted at Local Strip Club!
By Jeff Siegel | Wednesday, August 28th, 2013
She told me she was a socialist.
"She" is the stripper who feigned interest
in politics and finance in an effort to get a closer look at the inside of my
wallet.
But I wasn't having it.
No, this night wasn't for me, but instead for a
friend of mine who's about to get married...
It was your typical bachelor party setting,
fully-stocked with obligatory raunchiness and the kind of smack-talking you can
only retrieve from the vaults on rare occasions.
The Gentleman's Club was appropriately staffed with
girls that went by the names Tori, Jasmine, and Honey, and the bottles of
Belvedere vodka went for $165 — the cheapest in the place, but a bottle
guarantees a purple velvet booth behind a red velvet rope.
Now, I've never really been a fan of strip clubs.
The whole idea of walking into a place where you know the whole point is to get
hustled never really made much sense to me. Not that I have a problem with
strip clubs. After all, those girls have to make a living, too. And who am I
judge, anyway?
Heck, even the stripper who told me she was a
socialist didn't really move me much. And typically, I just would've forgotten
her admission of foolishness in less than five minutes.
But it was her criticisms of capitalism that gave me
the inappropriate compulsion to call her out...
You see, this was your typical, “Oh, if the world
wasn't so focused on making money, then maybe the world would be a better
place” routine (ironically coming from a 23-year-old stripper who probably
pulls in about $500 to $600 a night) — which begs the question: If “making
money” is such a bad thing, then why isn't she charging 20 puppy dog smiles for
a lap dance instead of $20?
Nevertheless, the whole argument that somehow
capitalism is the root of all the world's evils is just a load of crap.
Tell that to any immigrant who escaped a communist
country and see what happens. You'll get a history lesson that'll make your
stomach hurt.
The truth is it's because of capitalism
that so many folks can escape the jaws of tyranny and poverty and build a life
in “a better place.”
Where Freedom and Capitalism Flourish
If you're reading this now, chances are you have
access to electricity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is a luxury that many
of us take for granted, and it's a luxury that has been afforded to us by the
basic fundamentals of capitalism.
Plain and simple, where freedom and capitalism
flourish, easy access to electricity can be found.
But for 1.2 billion people in emerging economies
where capitalism and freedom are relatively new concepts, there is zero access
to electricity.
However, thanks to forward-thinking, free-market
approaches, the scourge of energy poverty could be nearly eliminated over the
next 30 years.
I'll explain how in just a minute, but first, read
this quote from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy Professor Rachel Kyte. I
think it speaks volumes about what lack of electricity and modern energy
technologies means to more than a billion people who don't have it.
Access to energy is absolutely fundamental in the
struggle against poverty. It is energy that lights the lamp that lets you do
your homework, that keeps the heat on in a hospital, that lights the small
businesses where most people work. Without energy, there is no economic growth,
there is no dynamism, and there is no opportunity.
Capitalism is one of the greatest catalysts for
positive change. I fully believe this, and history provides a long trail of
evidence to substantiate this claim.
And just like so many crises we've overcome in the
past, the crisis of energy poverty will also be solved through various free
market mechanisms.
Pay-as-you-go
In an effort to provide electricity to energy-poor
folks in India, a small tech company called Simpa Networks has developed an
interesting pay-as-you-go-styled model for electricity.
As company reps explain, customers make a small
initial down payment for a solar power system and then prepay for the service,
topping up their systems in small, user-defined increments using a mobile
phone.
Each payment also adds up towards a final purchase
price. Once paid in full, the system unlocks permanently. Simpa
Networks calls the pricing model Progressive Purchase™.
Similar pay-as-you go programs are currently being
tested and utilized in India, Brazil, and a few energy-starved African
countries, like Botswana, Namibia, and Mozambique.
For many of these communities, solar seems to be the
power source of choice, as it doesn't require centralized transmission (which
does not exist in most energy-poor areas).
And interestingly, thus far, the pay-as-you-go
model is proving to be quite successful not only for consumers, but for the companies
backing these programs. Some analysts actually believe prepaid electricity
could be the next step in the evolution of electricity services here in the
United States.
Building on an earlier report about Qualcomm
(NASDAQ: QCOM) launching a new service that allowed customers to prepay their
utility for their electricity, energy analyst Katherine Tweed recently chimed
in on prepaid electricity, writing:
For utilities,
the drive is to decrease the amount of money that is lost to uncollectible
bills. AT&T’s survey found that utilities send disconnect notices to nearly
10 percent of all residential customers each month, with about 3 percent to 5
percent of those actually being disconnected.
AT&T estimated that a utility with 250,000
customers and a 10 percent penetration rate of prepay would save between $5
million and $15 million per year. Another advantage is that customers on prepay
use about 11 percent less electricity per month, a meaningful rate of savings
for utilities looking to meet energy efficiency resource standards.
And of course, as inflation continues to put the
smackdown on our purchasing power, a prepaid option could serve as a desirable
and necessary option for a lot of folks still trying to make ends meet.
And by a lot of folks, I mean most of today's
struggling middle class.
Look, I'm not saying we're all going to go to
prepaid plans next year, but certainly such an option can benefit both
consumers and utilities...
An option, by the way, that was initially spawned by
a free-market approach to solving a very real problem.
To a new way of life and a new generation of
wealth...
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