My electric bill is way high..... why? (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

You think $0.15/kHr is bad? In Massachusetts this month I paid $0.106/kHr in delivery charges and $.111/kHr in generation charges for a grand total of 21.7 cents per kHr.

 

[Jason L.]

Ouch. Does LILCO [Long Island Lighting Company] still have the highest rates in the country? Carl from LI would know.

 

[Jay H]

Not sure how green Green mountain energy is, have you seen this website?

not sure what to make of it but when I bought my house, I saw that website and also saw GME sells power in NJ.

Having said that, my electric bill every month is like $20...

Jay

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Hmm...I checked my last bill and I'm only paying $0.059 per kWh from Idaho Power. What are you guys doing wrong?

 

[JoeyR]

Just because you have a new HVAC system doesnt mean it was installed correctly

 

[Karl_Luph]

Thanks for the info guys, checked out a couple of sites like powertochoose which showed various charges and plans, of course there's zero info on customer service or how happy their customers really are. with the cost of natural gas going up,looks like the electric bill will too. Jason L. ,lol, tell me why TXU is evil???

 

[Jason L.]

Karl, you are trying to choose a energy service provider - not diffuse a bomb. Local electricity is delivered to your home by a separate entity. You probably won't ever need to contact with your energy company except for billing. Just pick one and if you don't like them switch. Electricity is a homogeneous commodity to the end-user perspective.

As far as GME/TXU being evil - here is an earlier thread:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...in-energy.html

The TXU story goes like this:

1. TXU gets involved in foreign markets. In 2002 these turn into a disaster forcing the company to write down billions of dollars. The stock price craters to a low of around $8 a share:
Link - Energy Future Holdings Corp (TXU) - Stock chart, Index chart - MSN Money

2. TXU returns to profitability and its stock price rises [to near $70 by late 2007] not by improving their product, cutting costs, or being better than the competition. They do this by doubling their electricity rates. It is correct that the price of natural gas jumped during this period - but not this much, nor did they lower the price when natural gas prices went back down. The consumer is also to blame here as people are just too afraid/apathetic/uninformed/confused to change their electric provider. I have talked to people in DFW about switching but they think that they will be forced to use candles if they switch because something might go wrong. This is simply not true. Deregulation has been a bust so far for the state of Texas.

3. An enormous transfer of wealth occurs between TXU's customers and the company in order to make up for their boneheaded foreign markets foray - enough to give $270 million into the pocket of John Wilder who was CEO of TXU for a whopping 3 years until they got bought out.

4. TXU decides to build 11 dirty, cheap, coal-fired plants in a state that has some of the worst air pollution in the country.

5. During this time TXU agrees to be bought out by the private LBO firm of KKR for $45 billion. We all know how wonderful privatization has worked out so far. Analysts say the only way KKR can afford this price is to raise rates - even though KKR swears to lower rates as they should have done originally when the price of natural gas fell.

6. TXU has incredibly powerful lobbyists in a state that is probably the most favorable to buseness. They have been charged with all sorts of price gouging, fraud, etc. TXU was in the newspaper almost on a daily basis about a year ago.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

No commercial entity would bother to run lines out to rural Idaho and Oregon, so the government steps in and subsidizes it. Your power bill is low for the same reason people living in places like the Tennessee Valley Authority have low bills: your fellow citizens are helping pick up the tab. Meanwhile, in the densely populated West Coast and Northeast -- where commercial power generation and transmission is commercially viable -- the government decides to let the free market prevail and the rates are much, much higher. Texas is also densely populated, but since they also produce a lot more per capita energy than the Northeast and West Coast, the states' rates aren't quite as bad.

For more info, check out this page:
Idaho Power - About Us - Regulatory Information

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Adam,

You miss the point of my tease. Idaho generates huge amounts of electricity from our local hydroelectric plants. Until quite recently we were a net exporter of power. Now that we are starting up on several nuclear plants we should get back into the net exporter role. Don't forget that the Idaho National Labs have been building plants since the late 1940's, and that the first commercial nuke plants were right here west of Idaho Falls.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Don't forget that the TVA was set up to build dams and hydro power plants, so the TVA itself is a net exporter of power.


Ah, NO. The US northeast is a net importer of power. NY and New England produces a fraction of what they consume: most is imported hydroelectric power from Quebec.


California's politics has prevented any reasonable construction of power generating plants in the last 5 decades. California is grossly a net importer of power.

The Pacific Northwest states (Washington, Oregon, and Idaho) have the two things necessary for hydroelectric power generation: rivers that flow lots of water, AND lots of vertical drop. The Southwest has precious little water. The US east of the Rockies is basically flat as a pancake, with little vertical drop in the rivers. There's a reason that Boeing - our largest aircraft producer - is based in Seattle. Aluminum is extracted from its ore by electricity. Only the Pacific Northwest has the hydro capacity to produce aluminum in vast quantities.

 

[Karl_Luph]

Well, for the time being,I'm going to try the TXU Freedom Plan since there's no deposits,contracts, just go month by month.I needed to find something fast, had closed on a used house Friday,power was going to be disconnected Monday and by the time I got around to calling on various electric providers this last weekend,alot of these new electric providers don't have operator's on call 24/7.Reliant did,as well as TXU. Decided for now TXU will do til I do more research and see if I can find one cheaper,will lock in for a year,and NOT have charges for breaking a contract. I did a little sniffing around on Ignite Energy and found out it's like a MLM,you pay a bunch of money to join and try to get a bunch of others to join at the tune of around $300.00!!!!

 

[Jason L.]

...resurrecting dead thread

I have these old computer speakers with a small subwoofer. It has a big brick for an ac adapter. It gets hot even when the speakers are turned off. This seems like a perfect example of an energy vampire and a perfect candidate for the Kill-A-Watt:

Computer Speakers w/subwoofer [Power Off] [48 Hours = 0.08 kwh]
0.04 Kwh/day [Power On 24 hours a day]
14.6 Kwh/year x $0.15 Kwh/hour = $ 2.19 to run for an entire year

Surprisingly, not much savings here. I was surprised when the real time wattage was a whopping 1 watt even though the AC adapter runs hot. With the Power on but the sound off it naturally used more electricity:

Computer Speakers w/subwoofer [Power On/Sound Off] [48 Hours = 0.19 kwh]
0.095 Kwh/day [Power On 24 hours a day]
34.675 Kwh/year x $0.15 Kwh/hour = $ 5.20 to run for an entire year

 

[jacval60]

My electric company is a rip off my electricity is also high, here is what happened to us they turned off our electricity and said we were way behind cause our electric bills were like $200.00 a month so we paid all the money to get reconnected but we were without electricity for two days and all my food went bad, I had just went to market and purchased $400. in food. Two days later they(Electric Company) saying we had over paid them about $350.00 which when they shut us off we know how fishy it was because we paid always on time and the whole bill even though we had to without a lot of things. When I called them to let them know about our food and that they made a mistake and I was going to sue them the lady told me when they had shut us off it had nothing to do with us being over paid. I tell you they are rip offs one time it was way over our usual charge of $200.00 a month and I called them the lady told me to read the meter to her and she said that it was wrong and corrected it. You know if you have a dog in your yard they will put anything they want cause they will not go in your yard to read the meter. I live in California and I do not even have to use a heater cause it is always sunny out here and my electric bill has always been high. Even when my boyfriends mother lived in the front house and we lived in a garage converted to a apartment. She never really watch TV. We have all flourasent lights too. Which is suppose to cut down the bill. We even have a low rate added to our bill. I even paid enough money to get ahead a few months ago and now after I paid all the bill this month they say they are going to cut me off for $33.00. That tells you what rip offs they are. There are only three people who live in the main house since my boyfriend's mother died in 1993. Sure we have cable and three TVs. But they are not on all day. Now tell me does that sound odd? I thought they had a new law where we can choose a different electricity company? I've checked on-line and only Texas has it. I wonder what ever happened to that law?

 

[Steve_Tk]

EDIT: I'm a victim of a post bumper

 

[Sumnernor]

Where I live in Germany, I have no feel for what electricity costs. When I take a Train in the country between Munich and Lindau on the Bodensee (Lake Constance) I am amazed how many houses have sun collectors on the roof. Sometime I will inquire about the costs. These houses are not of rich people but mostly farmers. I'd be interested in comments.