Have you been freaking out about your electric bill? I sure as h3ll have. I have an electric water heater, electric range, electric clothes dryer, electric air conditioning, and until my dishwasher blew up last month, that was electric as well. There is no natural gas in my neck of the swamp, so everything is generated from coal, oil, and nuclear plants. And my latest electric bill was insane.
July and August are the worst months of the year, natch, due to the 100 degree heat, necessitating almost constant air conditioner use. But I’ve sold my chest freezer, adjusted the programmable thermostat, and quit using the dishwasher, (’cause it blew up, foshizzle.) And my bill still caused me to spittle-shriek.
A quick jaunt into the records of Progress Energy, and I learned two things:
From the past year, my actual electric use is down 15%, big cheers of praise for me!
But as you see from my little Chart O-Death, the rates for electric-plant fuel has gone up 30% from last year. Thirty Percent!
There’s no other point to this email, really, other than to rant and rave about my utility bill.
Thank you.
wtb wind power, pst.
I half imagined that NASA employees would have received free zero-point energy generators or perhaps a fusion generator that they stole from the ALIENS when they VISITED THE ASTRONAUTS after the first MOON LANDING!
Heh… sugar. Sorry.
Having just passed through the coolest July since 1924, I am very pleased with my lack of electrical usage. (Heck I had to turn on the friggin’ heat twice to take the ‘damp’ out of the air.) Admit it, AC makes your life in those hot environs tolerable.
You could get a house with a wrap around porch, lots of fans, wear white suits and wide-brimmed straw hats. Then you sit on your front porch sipping ice tea while the puppy of love sits at your feet and waving at all the neighbors and asking after their families.
Or you could stay inside, in shorts, playing tug of war with the puppy of love, or waching the History Channel or Scarlet Johannson, while cold beer, assuming it’s still fresh, and tell us about life down sou’ where it’s hot.
Your sacrifice for our entertainment is much appreciated. No. Really. It is.
Pssst (Lady Jess here btw). You’ll save even more electricity by using that dishwasher. I kid you not, most people don’t run the d/w until it’s full. Most sinks have less capacity for dishes than the d/w, so you are heating and using more water (and of course elec) washing them by hand. I thought I’d be smart and not use mine for a couple months, and my bill went up. Went back to using it…it went down. Foshizzle
1) what LuAnn sez. Foshizzle.
B) I feel your pain. Our last bill for a 2000 SQ ft dwelling was over 500 clams. Our final bill once the ‘averaged’ thing was worked out is over $1K. Timear forsees many, many beers.
Gimmlette obviously learned everything he knows about the south from TV.
Id love to see him sit on that porch in Florida heat sweating buckets and swatting mosquitoes and sipping on a watery tea (the ice having melted about four min after exiting the house) .
“take the ‘damp’ out the air” he says… what was it… an intolerable 60% humidity? Try a 100 degree day at 100% humidity and I’m 100% sure he would pay $100 for an hour in AC.
Sorry if I sound bitter. Probably just the heat getting to me… whew!
I like my electric company here in AZ, I pay a flat 119 a month.
euhm…I feel your pain Mr Howell – I however pay about 300kr (30bucks give or take) for my heating…. so my suggestion: move to Sweden foshizzle
Looking at just those rates, I think we’re missing part of the picture. In the Boston area, I pay $0.196/kWh, which is broken down as $0.069 for delivery services (the wires and administrative fees), and $0.127 for electrical generation. This is up 6.5% from last years rates. Unless there are charges not in your spreadsheet, it looks like you’re getting a good deal.
Our energy bills usually spike from heating costs in the winter, though that’s usually not electricity – electric heat is prohibitively expensive around here. Electricity usually runs lights, those cook stoves that aren’t gas fed, and things that get plugged into wall outlets (including window mounted air conditioners in the summer). I have a couple air conditioners in the windows, here, so my electric bill is highest in summer, but it’s more than offset by a much lower gas bill than in the winter.
One way to save money is to call the cable company and tell them that you already pay the Universal Service Charge on the phone bill and do not need to pay it again to them. Then call mobile provider and put them on notice, too. You caoul save the cost of 2 raspberry lattes a month.
I also live in Orlando. But I live in home that is nearing 60 years old. You know, the kind that they had to retrofit AC into. Imagine the cooling bill on this.
I feel your pain – hubby and I made some home improvements a few years ago (replacing A/C system, roofing changes, etc..). Our energy use is down about 25%, but our power bills are still at record highs. FPL FTL
But I gladly pay it…I can’t see how people even *lived* in Florida before the invention of central air….
Isn’t that what a blog is for? To post about whatever you want, and to hell with the masses!
But, on that note, it’s why I don’t have Air conditioning…well, that and the fact that I live about an hour from Philly…especially this year (It’s been nice and cool up here…aaaaaaaah). I grew up without it and I actually like it better with the windows open, so I don’t have a whole lot to worry about with regards to A/C. But the best thing to do is to find even more ways to lessen that electric bill. If lights are left on (and if your son is anything like mine, they will be), TV, radios, anything you’re not using at the time, get ‘em shut off and shut down. Lots of little things that, while they seem minor alone, when added together, they really add up quickly.
Incidentally, those prices are less than half of anything you would pay in Texas. Just be happy that you don’t live in a state where the electricity is deregulated.
Just wait till cap and tax hits.
I feel your pain, but it a different way
those cold to the bone Canadian winters
I feel your pain my friend, our energy rates have been creeping up at a ghastly rate where I live and supposedly it is only going to get worse when the rate caps expire in the next couple of years.
I feel your pain.
Here in California, where we have been on such a long “conservation” kick since the rolling blackouts of the dot-com era the utilities now are raising rates because revenue is down! They said since everyone us using less energy, they are billing smaller amounts and they can not fund R&D for next gen clean power. There for they have to punish us for using less power by raising our rates.
I noticed this trend here in Colorado as well. Not so much electricity, but water. A few years ago we were in drought conditions, with major water restrictions on grass watering, and car washing, everything. You had a limit of water you could use in your house hold, and when you busted that limit the price per gallon tripled. People quickly learned to cut back on water usage.
Two years later our reservoirs were filling back up, and everybody was more aware about their water usage. This awareness killed the money coming into the water departments, so they all had to raise their rates substantially in order to stay open and provide us with water. I’m sure it’s a similar deal with your electricity. You (and lots of others) may be using less, but the company still has debts to pay and buildings to maintain and people to employ to make sure you have your electricity when you need it.
Or perhaps they are just greedy bastards. Hard to say.
Blame Cap and Trade this is a hidden tax for everyone on our electric bill. didn’t you read the 1000 page bill that congress past over a month ago. LOL I did and this is just the start of Cap And Trade.
You could move to Jacksonville – JEA (aka the mafia in electric company clothing) has higher rates, and are talking about an increase. Last electric bill for a 2k sq ft house was $780. Admittedly, there are 8 people in the house, but seriously…
Dude, it’s so true! Meanwhile I’m 9 months pregnant in August (shakes fist at evil husband) in this horrid heat and wouldn’t even dream of turning the air conditioners off lest I pass out in an unglorious manner. I’m pretty sure I spittle-shrieked when my last bill arrived and that was only for June. But hey, the State was kind enough to help subsidize my bill since my husband recently became unemployed. They gave me a fat 1 time payment of $50 which I’m sure just covered the nonsense taxes (you know, the “temporary ones imposed by the state to fund public policy programs”). Oh, wait, my $50 CAME from that tax. How ironic.
why don’t you install solar water heater? with electric back up for bad winter days?
I know its always annoying when bills go up, people complain about the energy bills all the time. But when you consider what it is your getting the cost is actually tiny!! This is Electricity!! Energy!! It is what separates our existance from living in squalor, our lives now compared to what they would be if we were born 200+ years ago. And the cost is quite small compared to our income. Rent/Morgages, Food, Travel all usually take up a much larger part of our budgets, yet Electricity has a far far greater impact on how we live our lives.
Also there are several costs that are associated with the energy grid weren’t accounted for in the past 50+ years, Development, Supplies, Diversification, Environmental effect of energy use. Our great grandparents, grandparents, parents, and ourselves up to now, defered most of these additional costs to the future, which turns out to be, well, now. So now we have to not only start paying the full cost of energy, but also have to pay the 50+ years of defered cost of the past. So expect our energy bills to double or triple their current costs, which will feed into costs of products on top of that.
Of course we don’t have to let the bills go up in price, we can choose to keep defering the costs, but eventually someone has step up and pay. And when they do two things will happen, first our generations will be labled as SCUM for all time, for hundreds of years, we will be know as the generations that tried and succeeded in fucking over our children and grandchildren. And second, at least one of the generations that defered paying, will be alive and retiring (it may well be you and me) and asking the generation that is paying the cost, to on top of that cost, pay for our retirement, our healthcare and our pension. And that may well turn nasty.
Anyways, this has turned into abit of a rant. But just remember one thing, when you pay your energy bills, remember EXACTY what it is you are paying for, do you really and truely believe that you are being overcharged for what your are getting? Visualise everything involved in giving you that continuous supply of energy, the power plants, infrastucture, maintainence, development, supplies, etc. Visualise how your house and live would be if there was no energy supply?
Huh. All this makes me feel kinda bad; At .067/KwH, last month’s bill for a 2200 sq ft home? 32$, including gas and taxes. Yay for cheap electricity!
That said, we get up to the 105′s here, and decided not to get air conditioning. Those things are energy monsters.
I’ve been seeing a $10 hike in my electric bill since I got my new computer, but I kind of asked for it.(1000w PSU) That puts me around $150 a month. But I don’t use any AC since in my area you can just open the windows at night and close them for the day. But rates have been going up also. Makes me mad, but what can you do? Cap and Trade sure isn’t going to help (Power is provide by coal up here).
You mean you don’t have solar panels which, due to your sunny climate, provide you with so much energy that you can’t use it all and end up selling the excess to the power company who now pay you each month/quarter? How odd.
Ah, one of the harder things of owning a home…keeping up with utilities…
I live in in Tampa, feeling the same rate hike as Orlando. That 30% rate hike was proposed by Progress when gas was over $4 a gallon last year. Now that gas is nearly half that (and still grossly overpriced) they aren’t backing down the fuel rates. Just wait until inflation hits us next year and you’ll see REAL screaming when they jack it up AGAIN.
Wonder when off-shore drilling will start?
BRK and Jamison: just read that Progress Energy and Florida Flicker and Flash (Florida Power and Light) are asking the PSC for a 30% increase in base rates over the next 2 years. Talk about adding insult to injury. The good news is that the consumer advocate has replied with a request to lower rates.
Musk single = $75-125 light bill. Musk with girlfriend moved in = $200+ light bill.
Good news! I hear energy prices, and specifically fuel diven energy prices are on their way back down! I hope that starts to make a difference in your bill soon. =)
BRK,
the cyberspace needs you. Come out and write
If it’s any consolation.. my brother-in-law just received a water bill for over $61,000. Happliy (and obviously) it was a clerical error. But you can imagine the gut-clenching reaction when you open that kind of bill!
-Del
Solar paneling ftw?
SLASH/POKE …
Slash/sniff…
Shuffles away with discontent…
YOU’RE IGNORING YOUR BLOG AGAIN D;
The lack of reading material is melting mah brainz ;(
are you using one of those stupid smart meter’s? I came across someone who was able to prove that the smart meter was pulling more electricity than what he was using. I would suggest if you are using one to get your house independently checked and then check the meeter.
Where are u Daniel!
WE MISS YOU!
Progress Energy and Florida Power and Light are probably going to get their stuff through, they have a lot of lobbyists pushing.
I’ve had to swich all lights to CFLs, put in remote and timed power switches on all appliances, keep all lights off in the house unless necessary, and I’m not even home half the time and my electric bill is still almost $200 for a 800sq/ft
I found, odly enough, putting the thermostat at 78F causes usage to go down, vs 82F+
James
Clearwater, FL
I’ve been searching for the cheapest priced air conditioning for a while now, thanks for the good information!
homemadesolarpanels…
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