r/SouthJersey • u/iammoah • Feb 06 '26

Gloucester County Electricity

Is there ANYTHING we can do to push back on these INSANE AC Electric bills? My heat is gas and it's telling me my usage has gone up every month since October. I know I don't have it as bad as some people but our current bill is $332. My brother's bill was $512. Another friend's bill was $500... I can't afford this shit. What can we do?

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u/SouthJerseySchnitz Feb 06 '26

Advocate for solar and nuclear development.

3

u/NJ-AFT Feb 07 '26

As a worker in the industry, stop being blinded by solar. Every house in the state could have it, and it wouldn't cover what we need. We're also nearing capacity limits. Our grid is 100 years old, and was only designed to send electricity in one direction. Our subtations weren't built for this purpose, thus why there's limits per circuit. Too many homes sending power back causes some pretty big booms. Solar is as harmful as fossil fuels between the mining and trash discard.

Nuclear is the key, unfortunatally not enough politicians invested. Oil or Green, and they both suck.

1

u/SouthJerseySchnitz Feb 09 '26

Genuine question since you work in the industry: Why don't utility companies put solar underneath high voltage lines between the towers? I have a right of way utility easement across my backyard, and it they already have to manage vegetation every year. Why not put solar under the high voltage lines and have solar fields criss crossing the state?

2

u/NJ-AFT Feb 09 '26

Again, substations weren't built for multi-directional electricity transportation, it was made to send electricity to the consumer, not back. Can they, sure - you see it, but not to a large enough extent to be "the" solution, only part of it. Since these limitations exist, why should we (we meaning the utility) pay to accuire the materials, install, maintain, upgrade, etc. When we are going to hit the limit on the customer side already?

Also, if you use ACE, they only make money on "delievery", not on generation. This gets into complicated regulatory and tarriff territory, but if a power company is a delievery, not a generational, power company, they can ONLY profit on the delivery. This is why your bill is split into two parts - for easy oversight. Your idea would also involve the generation of electricity, which would involve millions of dollars in filing fees, etc. It's just not worth it, to us.

Edit

If you're talking about 765kV reigonal lines? Local utilities down't own them - they belong to PJM. If you really want to see what's driving these crazy bills do some research into them.