deregulation backfires in Maryland (1 Viewer)

[Greg_R]

Well, before the thread gets locked for political commentary, I'll toss in my 2 cents. I would not swap out your speakers... you'd be surprised how little current (and actual percentage of electrical bill) your HT consumes. My A/C is responsible for a %25 jump each summer. My hot tub (50 amp circuit) only added $2.50 each month to my bill. In summary: look at the efficiency of your major appliances (fridge, electrical heating/cooling, etc.). Gas is WAY more efficient (cost-wise) for stoves and heating.

It sounds like you are single and living in a fairly small space. I doubt even major changes would drastically affect your bill. For example, I unplugged my fridge and turned off the heat for 3 weeks while visiting family. This resulted in a $10 savings on my electrical bill. A new fridge or A/C unit would take years to pay for itself (in terms of energy savings). I think you're stuck with the increase (unless you move to another state)...

 

[JeremyErwin]

ah, the bare necessities. Coffee. Internet, Books. Film.

You could take a hint from otherpower. Build a windmill. Go off the grid. Trade in your home theater for a car home theater -- those run off 12 volt, don't they?

 

[chris_everett]

As I've watched energy prices rise, I've worked to try and reduce my consumption of electricity as much as possible. Here's some things that I've found that have made my bill about 20% less than average for a home of my size.

I replaced nearly all of my reguler incandecent bulbs with either flourcents or halogens. I replaced them as they died, so no great cost

I also replaced nearly all of the light switches in my house with dimmer switches.

After doing those two things, I've only replaced 3 bulbs that were on dimmers. Two of them were incandecets, one was a halogen. The couple of locations that I still have reguler bulbs and switches still burn through bulbs much faster.

Carefully set my automatic thermostat.

Found out that modern detergent works well in cold water, so I've started to use cold to wash clothes most of the time.

Light timers and sensors in appropriate places.

Insulated my garage door and garage ceiling.

Changed my irrigation practices.

These are all "lifestyle neutral" changes, or often lifestyle positive. (Having a dimmer in the bathroom for that midnight trip is a must) And it's saved a _lot _ of money for me. My "phantom" load is still higher than I'd like, but that's not a "lifestyle" sacrifice i'm willing to make, going around and unplugging everything.

Things I plan to do:
As appliences need replaced, buy more efficent ones.
I plan to build my next home, and I plan to consider energy savings throughout the design.
Consider installing some solar cells on the roof, if cost effective.

High energy prices or here to stay. Blame who you want, but in the end, it's our own damn fault. We consume an absurd amount of energy, and it's got to come from somewhere, and we've demanded that it not come from nearby, and that it not come from nuclear power, or new hydro plants, etc, etc... I read the other day that our local utility loses 10% of it's power in transmission loss before it even gets to us as it's imported from a hundred miles away. Consider it a 10% NIMBY tax... Probably 15-20 by the time you factor in everything else.

The salad days of dirt cheap energy are over. The availablity of near perfect fuel in the form of coal and oil, that nature has spent thousands of years creating for us, in a form that costs next to nothing to use, is dwindeling. We are going to be making some tough choices in the coming years about what to replace it with. (Note to policy makers: Hydrogen is _not_ an answer)



The economical cars are here. Prius, civic hybrid... If you want the mythical 250mpg carberator, it's a myth. Their is not enough energy in a gallon of gas, at least for a car with the features that you want, and the performance you want. Do the math. Or buy a bike. Efficient power? The "people" don't want it... Why? It's nuclear. Or environmentally distructive. Or visually ugly. We have _chosen_ to pay more.

If I read the story right, the issue here is that the state gov removed price controls. The problem here is that the economy never worked with the _real_ cost of energy. Suddenly, they have to. Ouch. Coming on the heals of the most severe energy crisis in a generation? Double ouch.

 

[Scott Leopold]

I started working on conserving energy several years ago. Any time an appliance needs to be replaced, I look for the Energy Star label. If it's not efficient, I don't buy it. I replaced every bulb in the house with CF's, with the exception of the little utility bulbs in the fridge and dryer. They do make these, but after buying three packs and not finding a working bulb yet, I'm preferring to stick with the incandescents. We recently replaced both exterior doors with better fitting, insulated doors. Our house is over 50 years old and had the original, wooden, single pane drafy doors until then, and this made a huge, immediate difference. As a result, despite increases in the price of both gas and electric, my energy bills have remained pretty constant over the last five years or so. This is much more impressive when you realize that my wife and son are just as obsessed with wasting energy (and seemingly everything else for that matter), as I am with conserving. To give you one quick example (and, sadly, not the most egregious, just the most recent), my wife was giving my two-year-old a bath last week. Our daughter had a little cold, and my wife wanted to make sure that she stayed warm (while sitting in a hot bathtub that sits right next to a vent that was blasting out hot air), so she had the hair dryer running. When I reacted a bit loudly, she insisted I was the one being unreasonable. I swear it's not my diet that fuels my need for Nexium.

 

[Micah Cohen]

Good ideas. This spring, I plan to replace my drafty old windows with vinyl replacement windows. (Ye Olde Plastic Weather-Covering just doesn't cut it no more.) And I guess I should consider losing my incandescent bulbs, even tho I really like that warm yellow light. I have no yard to irrigate, and I already ruin all my clothes in cold water washes, so I'm covered there.

I am all for nuclear power, I swear it.

Hate to be a dope, but what's a "CF"?

How do dimmers help save energy? (I don't have any dimmers, except in my theater.)

Thanks for the suggestions.

MC

 

[RobertR]

Seems like a contradiction to me to say "we must construct artificial barriers to entry into this market because it (supposedly) has too many 'natural' barriers to market entry".

 

[Philip Hamm]

Change all your light bulbs to Compact Fluorescent. You can get warm yellow ones if you look around a little. If you're a Costco member they have them in inexpensive multipacks.

Get a programmable thermostat and set it appropriately and with conservation in mind.

If your fridge is 10 years old or more, replace it with an energy star fridge. In most houses, the fridge accounts for the largest amount of electricity used of any single electrical appliance. There have been gignatic advances in efficicency of refrigerators.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

CF are those compact fluorescents (The ones with the squiggles on them!)

As long as we are here, I have been agressively changing the blubs in my house with these, but they have a notice on them that says that they are not for use with dimmers and not for use in totally enclosed recessed fixtures - so my bathroom fan/light has to go with a regular one. Does anybody know why they have those restrictions?

Glenn

 

[Chu Gai]

As a further comment on what Joe DeMartino noted in Post #3, Item #2, now you'll still be paying the tax subisidies in addition to the utility increase. I understand that the whole country will be facing some interesting utility increases due to increased fuel costs.

 

[Jay H]

Most of my house is flourescent tubes except for the kitchen and downstairs. I'm hardly ever in the kitchen (I'm a bachelor!!!!) since I eat in the living room in front of my TV. I am soon to install a wood burning insert in my fireplace as some of you might recognize my threads on it. I already bike to work so I think I am close to doing my part with energy conservation. I do have a gas domestic hot water boiler but I'm considering going solar hot water if NJ does the rebates or if the tank dies, replacing it with a tankless hot water heater. I'd prefer to go solar though.

My electric bill is very low, between $13-$17 a month and my gas bill will be much decreased once I go to my wood burning insert as my primary heating source.

Just doing my part!

Jay

 

[DaveF]

I've found out here, marginal savings on electricity do very little to my bill. I pay about $60 / mo; of which $30 is fixed for "delivery" charges. Halving my electricity consumption would only decrease my bill by 25%. I've found it's better to pay a bit more and be a bit more comfortable.

Likewise for gas. I'm in a brand new house, Energy Star compliant. And heating bills are outrageous. I found it was better to pay a bit more and be comfortable, than to be chilly in the evening and save 10% on my bills.

And because my house is so well sealed, I'm supposed to run a whole-house vent fan to exhaust moisture, and subsequently hot air, for an hour every day. It's not obvious to me that Energy Star for houses is all positive.

So long as infrastructure and taxes are such a large party of my utilities, there's actually not much impetus to really reduce my consumption.

 

[chris_everett]

I agree with you on this one. The energy star is great for appliences, but I'm not so sure about homes, where it often seems "sponsored" by a utility. Your best bet is a heat exchanger to recover some of your lost energy, but you can also control when your fan runs so you lose the least amount of energy (run it at 4 am in the summer, and at 3 pm in the winter)

 

[Micah Cohen]

Ach. My fridge is definitely over 10 years old. It starts up and kicks off like an old Model T. And my water heater is over ten years old, easy. I have to sometimes wash dishes and then wait a half hour before I can get a serious scalding hot shower.

New windows... New fridge, new water heater...

This is definitely not the year for my 8-year-old Toshiba Widescreen to die.

:frowning:

MC

 

[Chu Gai]

That is one damned low electric bill Jay!

 

[chris_everett]

The high frequency switching in a dimmer will damage the ballast of a flourecent, as will the "trickle current" of a timer. I'm not sure why you should not use them in a recessed fixture. It may be related to the large physical size of most CF's.

My electric bill is between $35-50. It's not worth it to me to try and go further.

 

[Jay H]

Chu, you're not the only one to notice that! I've only lived here since January, however, all my energy is gas, stove, heat, water. I can't explain why the refridgerator, lights, my HT, etc don't amount to more juice but I'm not going to complain!!!! Maybe my electric meter is defective???

Jay

 

[Chu Gai]

Well, I'll tell you a story Jay. My son, before moving, lived for a time in the Chicago area where he bought a house. After he'd been in it for a while, I asked him what he paid for utilities. Shockingly, his electricity was only a bit more than yours and this was with AC and all that. None of it added up. Well, after a little more than a year he moved but later found out that the owner from whom he'd bought the house (or perhaps the owner before that) had somehow run an illegal wire bypassing the meter to a large extent. While my son had no legal culpability, the new owners were forced to make the necessary repairs so that all their electricity ran through the meter. I can't help but thinking that if you were to follow the wires you might figure out if something like this is going on.

 

[Paul D G]

We have one of those in our new house as well. It was set to run for 10 mins every 20m, but I soon cut it down to 5 every 30 to save energy. But about two weeks ago I just shut it down completely. The thing was really loud -- we had to turn up the TV when it kicked in, then turn it down when it shut off (the intake vent is in close proximity to the TV). And in the winter you'd just get blasted with cooled air as well. After a year we'd had enough so I shut it down.

-paul