I got my electric bill today

[DVCisME]

My bill more than doubled! We did nothing different, between that and gas when do we get a break!

 

[DaisyD]

Our is usually around $350. It was $700 this month. Can't wait to see what it is after the heat wave! LOL!

 

[disneysteve]

I just got off the phone with my next door neighbor. He called to ask me about when we replaced our heater and air conditioner a few years ago. His are on their last legs and he's ready to bite the bullet and replace them. I mentioned that we saw big drops in our utility bills, on the order of 40-50%. I told him that our July electric bill was $135 and we keep our AC on 74. He said the best his could do the past week, no matter what he set it on, was to get the house temp down to 81. His bill last month was more than double ours, and our house is bigger. He said I had talked him into it and now he was sure he had to replace his units.

This is a perfect example of what I questioned above. If new homes have high efficiency AC and older homes are gradually replacing their inefficient units with high efficiency units, why is energy usage climbing. Shouldn't it be leveling off or maybe even dropping? I know the growing population is a factor and their are just more houses and more buildings, so I guess that's the problem. Even though they may be more efficient, there are just more of them.

 

[DaisyD]

We replaced our heat pump and furnace last year with a high efficiency system. All new energy efficient windows went on two years ago. Our bill dropped by about $200 a month. Instead of $550 we were paying $350. Now with this lovely increase we are paying $700. We do not and never will skimp onm A/C. We keep it around 68 in the summer and 70-72 in the winter.

 

[TDC Nala]

How can some bills be $30 and some $900?? That can't possibly be just due to house size and electric consumption!

Possibly mine is around 30 because I am one person in a small condo who is rarely home and I don't run the AC when I am, or the heater, unless the temperatures become extreme.

I don't have any idea what it costs to heat, cool or power a household.

 

[faindrops27]

I assume my electric bill with the recent heatwave, and constant ac usage. Being around 450 for this month. Oh, how. I would love to move, somewhere, anywhere. To be able to have an 100 or 200 dollar electric bill.

 

[Goobergal99]

oh my god I just checked ours was $167 for a two bedroom apt!!

 

[minnie1928]

I'm wondering how much kwh rates differ from area to area. I live in S. Central PA and my bill rate worked out to be .0904/kwh. My bill actually wasn't bad, and it ran 6/29 to 7/28. My bill went from 112.35 to 163.77.

 

[DVC Sadie]

I just got off the phone with my next door neighbor. He called to ask me about when we replaced our heater and air conditioner a few years ago. His are on their last legs and he's ready to bite the bullet and replace them. I mentioned that we saw big drops in our utility bills, on the order of 40-50%. I told him that our July electric bill was $135 and we keep our AC on 74. He said the best his could do the past week, no matter what he set it on, was to get the house temp down to 81. His bill last month was more than double ours, and our house is bigger. He said I had talked him into it and now he was sure he had to replace his units.

This is a perfect example of what I questioned above. If new homes have high efficiency AC and older homes are gradually replacing their inefficient units with high efficiency units, why is energy usage climbing. Shouldn't it be leveling off or maybe even dropping? I know the growing population is a factor and their are just more houses and more buildings, so I guess that's the problem. Even though they may be more efficient, there are just more of them.

I, too, question why the energy use is climbing. Some of all this doesn/t make sense. In this area there are less people, buildings, and homes. The new pricing has not gone into effect as of yet.

 

[dvcgirl]

I, too, question why the energy use is climbing. Some of all this doesn/t make sense. In this area there are less people, buildings, and homes. The new pricing has not gone into effect as of yet.

Well, all this talk of electricity inspired me to pull a bill out from last July to compare. We have OUC (Orlando Utility Commission) and the charge per kilowatt hour of useage went up by 21.9% in one year. Quite a jump.

 

[dvcgirl]

I'm wondering how much kwh rates differ from area to area. I live in S. Central PA and my bill rate worked out to be .0904/kwh. My bill actually wasn't bad, and it ran 6/29 to 7/28. My bill went from 112.35 to 163.77.

We have two rates.... .09295 for the first 1000 KWH used.

And then 0.11295 for anything above that.

We have a hair under 3,000 sq ft and our usage is almost right at 3,000 kwh for this July and last July.

 

[minnie1928]

We have two rates.... .09295 for the first 1000 KWH used.

And then 0.11295 for anything above that.

We have a hair under 3,000 sq ft and our usage is almost right at 3,000 kwh for this July and last July.

Wow! We have 4000 sq ft and our usage was 1811 this month. What a difference! Of course I'm not in FL, but we still run in the 90's during the day. Except during the last week when it was 100+

 

[DVC Sadie]

Well, all this talk of electricity inspired me to pull a bill out from last July to compare. We have OUC (Orlando Utility Commission) and the charge per kilowatt hour of useage went up by 21.9% in one year. Quite a jump.

Thanks for pulling that up dvcgirl. We don't have our last years bills so I had nothing to compare except just knowing it had increased. Ours have probably have gone up around the same as yours and soon ours will rise another 70%.

Who knows, with all the increases, and not just electric, we may just up and sell everything and move in a couple of years.

 

[dvcgirl]

Wow! We have 4000 sq ft and our usage was 1811 this month. What a difference! Of course I'm not in FL, but we still run in the 90's during the day. Except during the last week when it was 100+

Yeah, well....we have an older home....about 16 years old and it's definitely not the most energy efficient. We have single pane windows for one. We thought about replacing them, but we're not sure how long we'll be here and so we don't want to make that investment. We have vaulted ceilings everywhere. I'm sure insulation isn't great. We also have a pool and so the pump is running at least 6 hours a day. However, we keep the AC at 78 during the day and 73 at night...not too crazy. We also use ceiling fans to keep us cool.

 

[neatokimmo]

I noticed a big drop in my power bill when I bought new windows and they weren't even expensive windows, generic white ones from THD.

When I lived in FL, our bills were insane and the house was hot. It was because at one point the previous owners had let the filter get too dirty and let dust get into the guts of the cooling system. I paid $100 to someone to tune it up and my power bill dropped $75 a month. All because of dust!

I am on the budget plan and its just $62 a month in East TN. It would be much lower but I work from home a lot and like it cool in the summer. I think I would pass out if I got a bill even for $200 here....$900 is mind blowing!

Kim

 

[mjbaby]

I just dug my bill out that covers the period up to June 21 (so, this latest heatwave isn't on it, nor will it likely be on my next bill). The total: $69.71.

Don't hate me! (Just to make you feel better, we use oil heat, which is going to be icky this year - and we live in a old, leaky house. BUT, we're going to biodiesel so hopefully we won't have to, you know, sell a kid on ebay or something.) We don't have central air, so that's a big part of it. And a chunk of that bill is off-peak usage. This last heatwave we did run our two (new) window ACs during the afternoon and at bedtime so I wonder what that'll do. Other than that, the only electric we use is for lights, laundry, cooking, the fridge and water heater. I've been experimenting with a solar cooker - which is cool! - and now that the humidity's broken a bit have hung some laundry.

 

[Brer Rabbit]

dreadful heat wave here the last 2 months, just got our bill, it was 300.00 2400 sq ft along with lights in 2 other buildings where DW raises exotic birds

 

[Harvest02]

We have not received our electric bill yet for July, but just went on Duke Energy's website to check. After reading all the posts on how high electric bills are, I was really scared to know what ours was going to be! Even with having our air on since it has been so hot, it was only $20 more than this time last year(about $146.00 for the bill). We have a 3 year old home with about 1800 square feet total plus another 650 in the basement. I didn't think that was too bad considering what everyone else was paying! We do have a programmable thermostat, so I think that has helped out a lot! Guess we got lucky!!!

 

[Disneefun]

We just got ours for July and it was $132. Looked back at Quicken and it was about $20 more than last year at the same time, but the kicker is that, according to last year's bill, we used less electricity this month than this time last year. (I expected that b/c we have been much more conscientious about usage and made some energy efficient changes.)

So, we used less but paid more. Thank you for the price increases.

 

[holbear]

Here in Maryland, our local electric company announced a 72% increase in electric bills, starting July 1st. The governor and state assembly have been arguing back and forth on how to make the increase more palatable (phasing it in) but the bottom line is electric bills will almost DOUBLE in the coming months. Ours is already about $300 in the summer so I'm dreading what the next month's bill will bring. And I echo whoever said that you shouldn't have to choose between electricity and food and I'm sure many in our state will have to do just that! What really confuses me though is how come there is such a drastic variance in electric rates around the country? How can some bills be $30 and some $900?? That can't possibly be just due to house size and electric consumption!

Another Marylander here.. YES! The price hike is absolutely horrible!! Our bill last month was $450. And it will probably be around that for the rest of the summer as well.