It's so cold and electricity is so expensive
So we're bundled up and trying to stay warm using as little heat as we can stand. The forecast for next week is 20 to 40 degrees below average across the midwest, not quite so dire here yet. Thanks to the shutdown of coal fired electricity plants and 400 residents of a tiny little town who decided to fight a pipeline, the utility is unable to bring in enough Natural Gas and 10 million people are dealing with this price increase. People should be rioting over this, but you know, Kim Kardashian's ass is so much more thrilling. |
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| The scariest thing is that some people, like many seniors, are on a fixed often not that high income. And they need their homes warm! |
| I am highly driven by my kids - HIGHLY. Right or wrong it is what it is. Boy have they been complaining. Mommmmm, it's so cold in here! I have to tell you mom kind of hit the floor when she got the bill this month! Mom's saying put a sweatshirt on, grab a dog -- we have 3! I wonder is it more efficient to plug in a heated blanket, turn on my gas fireplaces, a heating pad or just turn the furnaces up? I'm about to hook up all the Christmas lights then what? UGH! |
| Ron, that can't be right. Let me check my latest bills. My house is all electric and I don't pay NEARLY that. |
| My condolences for an all electric home. Friends on propane have similar stories. Two winters ago we had the big Jan. freeze that left many people on northern NM and parts of Texas with no natural gas for heating for days, temps were beyond sub freezing, in single digits and lower. It wasn't pretty. We are at the mercy of utilities that are stretched tight: supply, demand and people opposing creating new sources. A year or so ago we had the house super insulated, not going into details. It has helped with heating and cooling bills. When "my ship comes in" or win the lottery, I want a sun room on the south side of the house. We get enough sunlight (duh) to create a lovely solar sauna for me to bake during winter days. It is strange, the house is about the same temp now as a super cooled summer AC--about 65. But I'm frozen. My internal winter thermostat is different from summer's. So now I've added a thermal layer to all clothing, day and night; and an indoor hat for all times I'm not in the shower! And I stick close to south facing windows. |
CamVal1 wrote: Ron, that can't be right. Let me check my latest bills. My house is all electric and I don't pay NEARLY that. Yeah, I put the wrong number in, we use about 25,000 KWh of electricity a year, not 40,000. 17 cents was one of the most expensive rates in the country and it just went up by 8 cents to 25. The math is the math.  8 cents times 25,000 is 2 grand.We are shutting down rooms and devising heat strategies; we might have to break down and get some sort of a wood or pellet stove at some point; we've resisted having anything burning in the house for 22 previous winters, so I don't know. But we're really up against it with these kinds of prices. SheepieBoss wrote: My condolences for an all electric home. [...] It is strange, the house is about the same temp now as a super cooled summer AC--about 65. But I'm frozen. My internal winter thermostat is different from summer's. So now I've added a thermal layer to all clothing, day and night; and an indoor hat for all times I'm not in the shower! And I stick close to south facing windows. Thanks. One of the reasons might be that air warmed to 65 in the winter *generally* feels colder than air cooled to 65 because there's less humidity in the air as well. Relative humidity doubles (or halves) for every 20 degree Fahrenheit change in temperature. So air at 50% humidity and 45 degrees warmed to 65 degrees has only 25% humidity. Air at 85 and 70% humidity has to have quite a bit of water removed to reduce the temp down to 65; that's why the A/C drips so much water. It depends on your A/C setup how much water is left in the air. So if you're feeling cold, try adding some humidity. Then again at 65, it might just feel cold and damp. lol |
| Yeeeah, but we don't have AC, we are evaporative in summer, so in summer our house humidity is higher than outside, except when it rains. Winter, yes, that's right, it is DRY inside the house. I need to cook more soups...or take longer showers. Code forced us to put a vent and fan in laundry room, LOL! What a waste. However it is handy if I cooked something stinky and need to vent the whole house, bathrooms, laundryroom, LOL! I then have to crack a window as all our insulation and sealing make our house too tight. Used to have a whiz bang wood stove that heated the whole house. LOVED IT! until one day cleaning it and a screw or two came loose. Totally inaccessible area to replace them, even pro chimney guy said, either have to reline or tear it apart. So hole in ceiling is now a sky light. Friend has 2 pellet stoves, great when they work but deader than a door nail in a power outage. |
SheepieBoss wrote: Friend has 2 pellet stoves, great when they work but deader than a door nail in a power outage. I have a generator that can run a few things. In an all electric house I got nothing when the power is out! |
| You are gonna hate my guts, but my "price to compare" just lowered to 7.34 cents per KWH. My yearly usage is about 17000/year. But because they overestimated my last bill by quite a bit my bill this month is $77!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! can you believe that? That is the lowest bill I have had in many years by far. Granted it was because of their overestimation - but still... I am doing the happy dance. Thats almost $200 I can now put aside for my boys Christmas! Ron- I would not survive those costs. I don't know how you do it! Shellie |
| Ron, can you switch to natural gas? Our utility (National Grid) is running a deal with rebates if you switch to natural gas. Of course you have to have NG at the road. |
| Not a lot of people have all electric heat in my area - most homes are on natural gas for heat and electricity for A/C, so our electric bills are much higher in the summer. Right now our rate is .06/KWh and in the winter we might have $90/month in electric bills. I thought that was pretty high for winter until I saw your rates. Of course we're paying a higher gas bill in the winter that offsets that somewhat, but still, your electricity rates are ridiculous! If I had to pay what you're paying I'd be shutting up rooms and looking into other heat sources, too. That's horrible. |
| Shellie, that's awesome! I use a level billing feature too and was so happy last month when I saw that I should be ahead at the end of the year which would be yesterday. I haven't seen the actual bill yet which I think will include my new level rate for next year. Mark NG is our supplier as well. The closest pipe is 2,000 feet down the road. 20 years ago give or take they were putting in a couple of developments behind me and I contacted NG to see if they'd run the line for those 20 homes (and me!). Nope. $30 per foot. $60,000. The developers wouldn't go for it either, they simply installed oil systems. Raquel, I had .06 rates complete 22 years ago during off peak hours on a time-of-use meter. It was .16 peak. The normal anytime rate was .10. We wound up saving $475 for the year by shutting down the water heater during the day, showering, doing laundry/dishes at night, heating rooms extra warm just before the high period. We decided it wasn't worth it to do that for a year for $1 a day. They charged an extra $15 service fee per month for the fancy meter, that really ate into the savings. They don't offer that plan any longer for residential customers. |
| A friend of ours switched to coal for heat a couple years ago. He only spent about $250 for all of last winter total. I was so floored by what he told us that I am seriously thinking about what a change over would be for us. I have thought about pellet stoves and different kinds of wood stoves and whatnot. I think we will do something in the next few years. Too much to think about right before turkey day though. Shellie |
| If you get a coal stove... I wonder if they have a hybrid where you can burn wood and/or pellet fuel as well? I'd be a little bit afraid of a coal stove given the EPA's hostility towards the fuel. sez the guy heating by baseboard electric resistance...  |
Quote: sez the guy heating by baseboard electric resistance  Having dealt with old coal furnaces, cleaning out the clinkers and the smell.......no thank you. And heating fuel.......and wood.....short of a move to warmer climes for the winter, what is one to do? Just keep adding layers I guess. |
Ron wrote: Raquel, I had .06 rates complete 22 years ago during off peak hours on a time-of-use meter. It was .16 peak. The normal anytime rate was .10. We wound up saving $475 for the year by shutting down the water heater during the day, showering, doing laundry/dishes at night, heating rooms extra warm just before the high period. We decided it wasn't worth it to do that for a year for $1 a day. They charged an extra $15 service fee per month for the fancy meter, that really ate into the savings. They don't offer that plan any longer for residential customers. We're on a modified version of what you describe even though our seasons of high use are opposite! Since the burden on the grid here is June-September afternoons, we pay a higher rate from 2:00-7:00 PM during those months when the temps are up. It's pretty easy for us to manage with programmable thermostats - I find the savings worth it. We pre-cool the house before 2:00 and let it coast the rest of the day. We could definitely save much more if we managed it better, but since I work from home and the kids are out of school then, we basically do the minimum. The pay off is getting the lower rates the rest of the time. Customers who aren't on that plan have a higher standard rate year round. It might not be as enticing if there were additional fees for the thermostats/meters like you had though.  We have maybe 3-4 "critical" events each summer from 3:00-6:00 PM but they don't add up to much in comparison to the savings. |
rdf wrote: Ron wrote: Raquel, I had .06 rates complete 22 years ago during off peak hours on a time-of-use meter. It was .16 peak. The normal anytime rate was .10. We wound up saving $475 for the year by shutting down the water heater during the day, showering, doing laundry/dishes at night, heating rooms extra warm just before the high period. We decided it wasn't worth it to do that for a year for $1 a day. They charged an extra $15 service fee per month for the fancy meter, that really ate into the savings. They don't offer that plan any longer for residential customers. We're on a modified version of what you describe even though our seasons of high use are opposite! Since the burden on the grid here is June-September afternoons, we pay a higher rate from 2:00-7:00 PM during those months when the temps are up. It's pretty easy for us to manage with programmable thermostats - I find the savings worth it. We pre-cool the house before 2:00 and let it coast the rest of the day. We could definitely save much more if we managed it better, but since I work from home and the kids are out of school then, we basically do the minimum. The pay off is getting the lower rates the rest of the time. Customers who aren't on that plan have a higher standard rate year round. It might not be as enticing if there were additional fees for the thermostats/meters like you had though. We have maybe 3-4 "critical" events each summer from 3:00-6:00 PM but they don't add up to much in comparison to the savings. That'sa very fancy system! Our time of use system was year round. Peak was Mon-Fri 9AM to 9PM. Sat and Sun were off-peak. A/C here isn't much of an issue for me. On the hottest months we use maybe 500 KWh for A/C vs 3500-4000 for heat in the coldest couple of months. |
| Get a few more sheepdogs to warm you up?? |
mable4ever wrote: Get a few more sheepdogs to warm you up?? Not a bad idea, but they have SUCH cold noses!   Plus they gotta be walked and it's even colder outside!  |
Quote: Not a bad idea, but they have SUCH cold noses! especially when they share that nose after coming inside and one is still in bed, "Mom, are you still asleep?" |
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