I was one of the most happy fellas around when the phone companies went to flat-rate pricing. No more did I have to worry about the time of day, the day of the week, whether it was a holiday, or whether it was long distance. That has gone by the wayside for the most part. When you want to call someone, you just pick up the phone and dial.

When it happened I felt as though a minor but annoying burden had been lifted from my psyche.

But I just got something from Tucson Electric Power (TEP) that made my eyes water and ultimately gave me a headache. It is a brochure about their new PowerShift program. If you elect to go with this program, you’ll have to think about your electrical use by the time of day, day of the week, volume, whether it is a holiday and season. That’s because TEP’s new meters will detect those factors and more when it is charging you for electrical use. It will determine if you are using too much in the highest rate periods and charge you accordingly.

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I am concerned that if I let this “smart meter” track my usage that closely, someday the meter will rat me out to the Energy Czar. Next thing I’ll know, Al Gore will come parachuting onto my front yard, charging into the house and physically unplugging the offending appliances.

But you have only to concern yourself with 54 different rates that might apply at any given moment. There are rates for weekends including peak times, weekends including shoulders, weekends without peaks or shoulders. Each of those is divided into summer and winter periods, with different rates for peak times, shoulder times, and off-peak times, as defined in … I don’t know, the Congressional Record?

Within all those variables, your rate per kilowatt-hour could be as little as $0.057696 or as much as $0.18605. There are plentiful exceptions for persons who think they have mastered the system. My favorite sentence in the exceptions reads, “If Christmas Day and New Year’s Day fall on Saturdays, the weekend schedule applies on the preceding Fridays…. If Christmas Day and New Year’s Day fall on Sundays, the Weekend schedule applies on the following Mondays….” And yes, it’s actually a little more complicated but I ellipsed the parts that were most confusing.

This program is voluntary at this time. But if it proves sufficiently lucrative, or sufficiently confounding, no doubt the Energy Czar will make it mandatory. If you have any spare kids, you can station one out by the meter at all times to warn you of impending rate increases attributable to one of the variables listed above. Lacking such extra personnel, you could probably train your dog to perform the same function.

Of course if you wish to remain reprobate and adhere to the regime ancien, you can just stay with the rate schedule that varies only by the volume of power drawn and the time of the year. Then you will pay per kilowatt-hour between $0.073007 and $0.122158. That means if you are a teeny-weenie user toasting no more than two slices of bread a day, burning one incandescent lightbulb or three twisty fluorescents, running your electric toothbrush not more than three minutes a day, no TV but up to half an hour of a table radio without Rush Limbaugh, you should be using less than 501 kilowatt hours per month. You will be paying a flat rate of about 7 cents per kilowatt hour while your more mathematically-inclined neighbor, using the same amount of electricity, is paying less than 6 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s because he has mastered the 54 different rates that might apply and elected to make his toast between 8 p.m. and noon the next day between May and October and on certain holidays.

All this is not to say that PowerShift is not a wonderful thing, but it is to say that I will gladly pay the extra pennies per kilowatt hour not to have to think about it.

That was just the residential rate sheet. I’m sure they have at least 54 other rates for commercial and industrial users. You are going to love it.

Contact Lionel Waxman at territorial@waxmanmedia.com or visit his website: www.waxmanmedia.com. Lionel Waxman’s Flashpoint commentaries are published in The Daily Territorial.