I'm looking for suggestions of major cities in California that are being impacted by this weeks electricity rate increases. We are going to run some classified ads in California newspapers that simply say: EnergyConservationInfo.org

I used this promotion technique with a lot of success in the early days of my first website, http://www.justpeace.org.

Anyway, as I understand it, cities with municipal power are not affected by these rate increases, so I want to target my ads to large cities getting hit by the rate increases. So Los Angeles is out, San Francisco is in. . . who else?

Thanks for your assistance!

Robert Waldrop, EnergyConservationInfo.org

-- Anonymous, March 29, 2001

Answers

Response to Question about California cities impacted by rate increases

Robert..LA itself, ie City Limits is my understanding, has its own power plant, but that doesn't include the LA basin or out in the Valley. So the LA Times would cover all of that area. I know people who live 2 miles south of LAX and they had blackouts. IOW, most of the population of that area comes under the black outs. SF/East Bay are all under the blackout area I think. Sacramento proper has its own power but not the other towns in that valley. Bakerfield and Fresno are in the blackout regions I believe. I would think the best way to find out is read the newspapers from the cities. You can find them on line. Seattle would be good too...and they are of a different mind set in the PNW...lean more to the green with a little more common sense than the greens in Calif. Just my two cents worth.

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2001

Response to Question about California cities impacted by rate increases

Robert, I think Carl would know--he lives in CA. Should be on later but I'll send him a head's up as well.

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2001

LA proper is out Robert, but all around it inland and north is either Edison or PG&E. Central California Fresno is another area that is really going to suck big time this summer. I'm in Ventura, on the coast, our weather stays pretty temperate year round, so most homes don't even have air conditioning.

Places that are going to be in a world of hurt this summer are like San Fernando valley, and San Jouquin Valley (Bakersfield, Fresno, etc.,) that really heavily on ac... those are basically deserts that irrigation has altered the landscape... those folks bills will be nasty this summer, if they can get juice in the first place, that is...

Hope that helps...

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2001

San Jose and Sacromento?

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2001

Thanks for the suggestions. I've placed ads for this coming Sunday in the LA Times and SJ Mercury News. The LA Times ad will run for four days. It was a lot cheaper than I thought, but it took 3 phone calls to get someone to take the ad, they have a policy about not running ads with only a website address, I had to "Ascend the Ladder of Authority" at the paper to get it approved.

The SJ Mercury News was a lot more expensive, so it will run only one day, Sunday, in the special announcements section.

Thanks for the suggestions everybody!

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2001