power company issues

[Niele da Kine]

If you used that much electricity in our neighborhood, your electric bill would be around $750. There isn't a choice in power companies here, either, but we are completely off the grid and have been for decades.

If you are using that much electricity, though, a system sized to make that much would be huge so you'd have to cut way back on your power usage before trying to go off grid.

Is that an electric water heater? Anything that heats with electricity uses a lot of power. We have a gas tankless water heater and it does a wonderful job. On a well, you'd probably have to put in a pressure tank but I'm just guessing. You may want to look into either solar hot water or a gas water heater to lower your electric rates. Also insulate those pipes as well as the water heater itself. No use paying to heat stuff and then just let it cool off.

 

[gettinaclue]

Don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but an outdoor woodstove has worked WONDERS on our electric bill.

We also live in what amounts to a doublewide and have electric everything. We spent our first winter here in 04 and our December bill for that year was pushing 500. I almost wept when I saw the bill.

Our electric bills are down to 130ish in the winter now...and they were always higher in the winter before we got the wood stove (furnace).

It heats our house, and our water for practically nothing. I believe they even have the attachment to hook up to your dryer now so all the dryer will do in the winter is spin and the heat will be supplied by the wood stove.

Advantages: lower electric bills, no smokey smell AT ALL,

Disadvantages: ...I'm thinking lol

Seriously, the initial installation was pricey, and it does need electricity to run the fan, but wood is pretty easy to come by, especially pine. Oak is better since it burns longer but there are so many wood snobs out there it blows me away. People give us their pine for free when they charge others for the hardwood. Just keep in mind soft woods have more resins than hard wood usually and creosote will build up if you aren't diligent in your efforts to clean.

I would recomend investing in a hydrolic wood splitter in tandem to purchasing the furnace. We manually split all of our wood for the first 2 and a half years and I can't really say I enjoyed it lol.

 

[Laureli]

I can't comment on a lot of what has been said (but really want to ... just don't have the time) but I have taught my 4 year old daughter to say, "save electricity" and turn off what you are not using. the computer goes into sleep mode and I only power it down every so often, so next time I am able to get on board with this thread, I would like to ask a few questions to set myself straight. It is bath time....

PS we do have my husband fill the tub when he is mostly done with his shower and my little girl takes her bath. after that, on occassion, the dog gets a bath in that water....

 

[Laureli]

I can't comment on a lot of what has been said (but really want to ... just don't have the time) but I have taught my 4 year old daughter to say, "save electricity" and turn off what you are not using. the computer goes into sleep mode and I only power it down every so often, so next time I am able to get on board with this thread, I would like to ask a few questions to set myself straight. It is bath time....

PS we do have my husband fill the tub when he is mostly done with his shower and my little girl takes her bath. after that, on occassion, the dog gets a bath in that water....

we had an NC electric bill for 389 in december... last year in March and April 2010 (go figure since most of that was heat and we really had not started the incubation frenzy) the bill was around $330.

With that said, I try to turn off everything that I am not using. I unplug the charger, the coffee pot, calculator etc so I am not using phantom power. Do the computer(s) power save mode actually save or do we need to power it off to see significant savings? Also with a cable modem to access the internet, do you actually turn the power off on the strip to save the $$. When you do turn it on every day, it has to reprogram itself.... right?

yes, it would be nice to choose power companies.

Laureli

 

[Marianne]

Oh I know....we've been talking about the tankless water heater for a while but I have heard that sometimes you have issues getting enough pressure with well water.

Our current water heater that came with the house is like 6-7 years old, I think. The problem is that the hot water in different points of the house is inconsistent. For example, our master bath (closest to the heater) usually is pretty good. If I fill the bathtub though in colder weather I can't get enough hot water sometimes to justify taking a bath. In warm weather it is usually fine which makes me think we may need to insulate the pipes under the house. On the flip side, the water in the kitchen faucet will scald you and you couldn't take a decent shower in the kids' bathroom if you tried. The water will not get hot at all. Right now they are okay with it but it will not get hot in there at all. I wouldn't shower in there. I had to raise the temp on the water heater to 140degrees just to get it hot enough in the kids' bathroom. Here's the weird thing....the water in their sink will scald you but the bathtub won't get hot.
I don't get it.

There is a water diverter valve (???) in your tub faucet that probably needs replaced. If hubby was out of bed, I could ask him what its called. We had the same experience, and then all of a sudden, the hot water was 56 degrees..brrrrrr.

I called our power company and nicely asked about all the charges. The only thing that I remember is that she said they are charged different rates (monthly) from the bigger power company that supplies them. The more overall electrical usage, the more they are charged. So, if everyone cut back a bit, we'd all pay cheaper rates per Kwh.

The past two bills have been $350 each...we got tired of hauling firewood and decided to use the heat pump whenever it was warm enough outside for it to function. Agh. Our worst bills have been over $500. That's when we invested in a wood burning furnace.

Out here, even if we just bought firewood, it would be cheaper than electric heat.

 

[lorihadams]

Update---

My husband called the power company and asked what was going on with the wholesale power adjustment fee cause the last 2 months it has been over $50....yeah, I'm ready to kill someone.

So he calls and they tell him that it is due to the rise in the price of gas....WTF??? Are you kidding me? So my husband finds out how many customers they have and if you charge everyone $40 per month it works out to several MILLION extra dollars PER MONTH and you're gonna tell me someone isn't putting some money in their pockets somewhere?

We called a plumber and it turns out that our thermostat on the hot water heater had gone bad so that got fixed and the water issue is better. That has also decreased our electricity use somewhat cause now it heats consistently and properly instead of all crazy haywire all the time.

We also unplug everything when it is not in use. My problem is that I am also here all day with my two children so we use more electricity during the day than other people.

I try to keep our thermostat down in the winter and up in the summer but my husband is ridiculously hot natured and summertime is a real problem. He wants to jack up the ac and put the thermostat on 68 at night in the summer and it makes our unit sound like it is going to explode. It just can't keep up with the temperature difference. I keep it on 80 in the house and run the ceiling fans and as soon as he gets home from work (in the hottest part of the day ) He comes in and turns it down to like 72 and the unit just can't keep up until the outside temps go down at night.

He wants to get a woodburning outdoor unit for forced air heat and hot water. We have looked into solar but our issue is the ductwork in our doublewide. Trailers have smaller diameter ductwork and therefore cannot handle a more effecient standard home unit. Right now about the highest capacity it can handle is about a 13 seer. The most effecient one on the market is a 22 seer that a local company uses with solar panels but it requires a much better air handler and larger ductwork.

Another issue we have is that our air handler is in one end of the house....not very effecient. It really needs to be in the center of the house so that you don't get a hot/cold spot in the end furthest from the handler. My daughter's room is on the very end of the house and stays the coldest in the winter and the hottest in the summer because it is so far away.

Someday, I would love to be totally off grid, we have that ability here on this property with solar or a combination of solar/wind but we just can't do it financially right now. Tax incentives in VA are awful. Our hope is that in 10 years when our mortgage is paid off we will be able to either rebuild this structure so that it is more effecient or totally rebuild a new home that is smaller and better designed and possible passive solar as well.

For now, I'm doing all I can do to cut it down.

 

[framing fowl]

Wow!@ So they'll admit that's it's because of gas prices. I wonder if you could call the district attorney and talk with them about price goudging? It seems to me that something is just not right about that.

Doesn't an electric company have to get any rate hikes approved or is that just water companies?

 

[lorihadams]

He called the county administrator, who is a personal friend, and she said there was nothing she could do about their company billing policies no matter how twisted they were....he is not the first person to complain. Our last bill went down from $225 to $147 though, I'm sure the hot water heater had something to do with that. Our wholesale power adjustment fee was only $34 this month....they can shove it where the sun don't shine. I'm doing everything I can to bring my usage down and they are jacking up my bill with fees.

 

[Marianne]

I hear ya. Can you do some cheap passive solar units for next winter? Won't help all the time, but any free heat is still free heat.

I wonder if the power adjustment fee is figured according to your ele usage?

On our current billing we have:
energy cost adjustment - $29.74
availability charge - 27.50
county tax - $3.44

Without the tax, it's $57.24 before we even used a watt. Oh joy.

It's the same with rural water here. $35 even if you don't use a drop of water. And we have friends and neighbors that wonder why we don't get rural water. (Uh, $13K to hook up, $6K for the meter and then a bill every month vs three wells, monthly change of sediment filter, water softener and better than standard RO system, all paid for - kind of a no brainer)

 

[chickensducks&agoose]

Our electricity costs went way up, and DH was so mad at me, thinking I'd been leaving lights on, and doing stupid electrical things... BUT, the cost per KWH was what went up, almost 10%. so we've really got to cut back, because it's darn expensive. The best thing we've done so far, is to cancel our cable. It means that the kids spend a lot more time outside riding bikes, or playing on the swingset, and a lot less time watching tv. (we still can do movies).