And now for the most bizarre twist of events in the continuing saga of our relationship with CFE: our electric bill has gone down – drastically. Our kWh usage has gone up some, from 513 kWh last month to 576 kWh this month. But our bill went from $1,051MXN last month to $368MXN this month. The structure under which we are billed has changed. I don't know what twist of fate or computer malfunction occurred, but I will take it.

I know I have written about our electricity [4] and electric bills [5] quite a bit, so much so that I should probably make a topic just for electricity, but as an organization that provides a critical service, CFE stupefies me [6]. We once wasted an entire afternoon sitting around drinking cold Pacifico with friends and swapping CFE horror stories. Yes, we do have better things to do.

Now, astonishingly, we have managed to do something I previously thought utterly impossible. (and keep in mind I live in Mexico, where my ideas of what is impossible diminishes daily. Oh, the bizarre wonders I have seen.) We have magically moved from the three-tiered billing system into the two-tiered billing system. Now we get up to 175 kWh at the basico price, and everything over that is billed at the intermedio price. We don't get the wallet-killing, exorbitant excedente level at all. On top of that, the basico and intermedio prices are lower than they were before.

The bill is still just as confusing and ridiculous, I am just happier to look at it. It shows the cost of production to be $1,693.96. Then it shows the government's portion to be $1,253.49, making our total $440.47. But on May 1, the government summer subsidy kicked in, so in another part of the bill it shows our subsidy of $139.00, bringing our total to pay down to $368.38. So, for once I am not annoyed with CFE. Just think of all the extra Pacifico and shrimp I can afford this month.