Juneau's Energy Crisis

I can't believe I haven't blogged about this earlier, but here goes.
Many of you may not know that on April 16, there was a huge avalanche near Juneau that wiped out the town's hydro electric power lines. We're talking huge power line towers bent like toothpicks. Anyway, this meant that our town's relatively cheap hydro electricity was promptly replaced by generators powered by costly diesel. Initial estimates were that our cost per kWh would jump from $.11 to $.45 or $.50. Well after the dust settled it turned out the entire city was charged $.52 per kWh. So that meant we (and everyone in Juneau) made big changes. First we unplugged everything that didn't need to be plugged in. And we basically stopped using the dryer and oven. We did a lot of grilling and managed to get our deep freeze unplugged. (We heard that at our high rates a deep freeze could cost you $50 a month!) I also started using the dishwasher much less, about once a week.
So here's a view of how things have looked in our home for the last 6 weeks.And like I said, we weren't the only ones in town to cut back. The library and some stores started closing early to save energy. And pretty much every place in town turned off half of it's lights. Home Depot was the scariest like this. Something about the way they had their lights and aisles arranged--one aisle would be bright like normal and the next one would be so dark you'd have to squint to read the prices.
We got our first high bill a few weeks ago, and were were able to cut our energy consumption by 20% from the previous month. Which was pretty good since we had been gone for a week the month before and we had company for a week during the high rates.
The good news is that the repair crews reconnected the city to hydro power on Sunday night. Woohoo! That's a whole two months earlier than they had first predicted. The awesome two weeks of weather that we had at the end of May really helped. Right now we're in a slightly higher rate period--they haven't officially decided yet but somewhere between $.15 and $.18 per kWh--to cover the cost of diesel that rose over the six weeks. We're still doing a lot of our same conservation though. They've kind of become normal habits. I did use the dryer for two loads today though. Yea! But I still hung up one load--I just couldn't help myself!
So in closing I'd like to leave you with some of my favorite parts of an email/forward I received from a fellow police wife entitled "You might be a Juneau avalanche victim if..." (Yes, it's true someone actually made such an email.)

You Might be a Juneau Avalanche Victim if . . .

* You have asked family in the Lower 48 to mail you clothespins or clothesline.
* You have attempted to make a cake or cookies on the barbeque.
* Your family ate fish and venison for two weeks so you could unplug the freezer.
* You have driven your car onto your lawn and used the headlights to illuminate your house.
* You have held a flashlight so your children can do their math homework.
* Everyone in your family knows where the main power shut off is and which breaker is which.
* You have compared the cost of new socks and underwear for two months versus laundry costs.
* You are more frightened of the light than what might be in the dark.
* You know your mother would be proud of your survival skills.
* You say at least once a day "Thank goodness it didn't happen in January!"

This is a little more true than you might realize, but it still makes me laugh.
Have a good night--and turn out that light!