Your monthly Electric Bill

Mine leccie bill is runs about $85 a month and that's primarily for two people. That said, I have an electric water heater and dryer so I think it's fairly reasonable. Wouldn't mind a windmill gen. though . Half of my bill is delivery charge from Bangor Hydro.

Wow Steve, that is really low for Maine. At .17/kwh up there I could not get mine that low and I had electric nothing. Just lights, standard appliances, etc. Never could figure it out, replaced all the appliances and went to CFL's, removed hot tub, no difference. (Bill went up $20 when hot tub was added) It was not uncommon to see $150 and greater. the only thing I havn't tried is replacing the shallow well pump with a shallow submersible, 220 volt, to be more efficient. Just had new service put in, not gonna help as meter is on the house.

Kevin

Two of us--being real frugal-- go $40.00 a month with NYSEG straight across the board (thanx Rob)--elec hot water, not on a timer, using the washer & elec cloths dryer during off peak hrs--11 PM through 7 AM, light sensitive pasture light & barn lights when needed & normal house lighting & usage. Even when the kids were here it never got over $50.00 per mo. Of course I never had a problem telling the family to turn the friggin lights off

got a wife that is real good at turning the lights on but just starting her apprentiship on turning them off.... cant say much cause i catch to much hell

Our town owns our electric, so they set their rates.

Total rates about $0.14 /kw

Family of 5
All appliances electric (no longer using DHW elec, just fired up 520 w/coil)
All CFL

Total bill for 30 days $81 (including $9 res service)

Considering I control shutting off lights, not bad when looking at some others.
I should also see a good $20-40 drop in the future from not using EWH and part time dehumidifier.

Bill gets up into the $100-150 during summer use with 4 window AC units running.

freetown fred wrote:Two of us--being real frugal--go $40.00 a month with NYSEG straight across the board (thanx Rob)-

I forgot to mention that earlier when someone mentioned Ambit as an energy supplier. I experimented with a third-party energy supplier for a little over year, and when I compared it to what I would have spent with the variable rate through NYSEG...I was a little pissed to discover I would have saved about $20 that year if I had just stuck with NYSEG. I promptly "fired" the third party supplier and switched back to the variable rate from NYSEG.

As for the lights, our place usually looks like we are having a New Year's Eve party... This time of year and in the spring our bill can get down to $60 or so, but the summer months are pretty rough.

You need to get Ivan one of them thar miner hats with light. He'd love it, now as for Mrs Rob, you're on your own.

KLook wrote:Wow Steve, that is really low for Maine. At .17/kwh up there I could not get mine that low and I had electric nothing. Just lights, standard appliances, etc. Never could figure it out, replaced all the appliances and went to CFL's, removed hot tub, no difference. (Bill went up $20 when hot tub was added) It was not uncommon to see $150 and greater. the only thing I havn't tried is replacing the shallow well pump with a shallow submersible, 220 volt, to be more efficient. Just had new service put in, not gonna help as meter is on the house.

Kevin

Yeah Kev, I've been pleased with it honestly. I do have a deep well submersible (503ft) 220 pump (big bucks) and CFL's all over the house. I keep the water heater on the lowside but it's plenty big for two. The appliances (except my coal stoves are all fairly new and I always cook on the cookstove if it's going. I've had a couple $125's here and there but by and large, I'm usually around $85. Funny when I do get a $125, I can never figure why?

Rob R. wrote:

freetown fred wrote:Two of us--being real frugal--go $40.00 a month with NYSEG straight across the board (thanx Rob)-

I forgot to mention that earlier when someone mentioned Ambit as an energy supplier. I experimented with a third-party energy supplier for a little over year, and when I compared it to what I would have spent with the variable rate through NYSEG...I was a little pissed to discover I would have saved about $20 that year if I had just stuck with NYSEG. I promptly "fired" the third party supplier and switched back to the variable rate from NYSEG.

As for the lights, our place usually looks like we are having a New Year's Eve party... This time of year and in the spring our bill can get down to $60 or so, but the summer months are pretty rough.

I check prices regularly and the only supplier for gas and electricity that's actually consistantly beaten the distributor's supply pricing is energy cooperative of america. Noco is usually about the same, but the others range from outright scams to just costing you more money.

http://www.ecny.org/about/coveragearea.html

My bill hovers around $50-60 per month here in Conn, closer to $100-120 in summer due to occasional window unit AC use/constant fan use. I used to run a dehumidifier in the basement but that would easily double (or more!) the bill so I just leave the windows open until it gets cold and removed everything I care about from the basement. Probably not good to have all that damp air down there but cant stomach spending so much. Plus our basement gets very cold in winter and the dehumidifier runs but can't really dry out the air when the ambient temperature is around 55 degrees.

We run our DHW off gas boiler, gas stove (pilot ignition), don't own a dryer (hang on clothesline or on racks inside), most lights are cfl, etc. I live in the city and leave outside lights on, a cfl out front plus motion sensor flood lights in back. I'm thinking of replacing the motion sensors with something else, I think they end up pulling a lot of power, us and the tenants are in and out with dogs and etc. all evening.

I remember when I was single and working 50 or more hours per week and the light bill for my little apartment ran me about $15/month. Probably mostly for the refrigerator.

We hit the highest bill ever in the almost 10 years we've lived here this summer - $110. Lowest is about $60 in the fall and spring. Goes up around $90 in the winter ... which I can't figure out. Only thing different is the blower on the Harman (doesn't draw much at all) running 24/7, & the TV room circulator kicking on/off all day and night. Didn't think those 2 things would add up to $30 a month ... but apparently so.

We're about .08 cents per Kwh ... was .06 this past summer. Just me and the wifey here. We really don't own much besides washer & dryer, dishwasher, fridge, & oven , window A/C's in the summer, well pump (220v, deep) ... and the compressor out in the barn. Those are the biggest draws. All year long I leave my 175W mercury vapor light on, controlled by a photocell. All lights in the house are the electronic curly-cue wonders (made ZERO difference in bill) along with my 84w RAB motion light outside (they SUCK in winter - takes about 5 minutes to get brighter than a cigarette lighter), and even still I've trained the wife to always whack the switch when leaving a room - that's the way I was raised, so that's how I operate.

I remember when our old well pump was failing, our electric bill was all over the place. There was no consistency. One month would be 400kwh .. the next 800, no matter what time of year. It ended up blowing the capacitor from the amp draw. Filled the basement with thick, smelly smoke! Probably PCB mist knowing this place ...

What pisses me off about the electric bill, is when I was working I was running two 13,000+ btu window A/C's PLUS a 3rd 6k btu unit .... and my electric bill was $20 cheaper than it is now. But when I was working, we had a different guy in the White House that never said my electric bills would "necessarily skyrocket" ....

SMITTY wrote:We hit the highest bill ever in the almost 10 years we've lived here this summer - $110. Lowest is about $60 in the fall and spring. Goes up around $90 in the winter ... which I can't figure out. Only thing different is the blower on the Harman (doesn't draw much at all) running 24/7, & the TV room circulator kicking on/off all day and night. Didn't think those 2 things would add up to $30 a month ... but apparently so.

We're about .08 cents per Kwh ... was .06 this past summer. Just me and the wifey here. We really don't own much besides washer & dryer, dishwasher, fridge, & oven , window A/C's in the summer, well pump (220v, deep) ... and the compressor out in the barn. Those are the biggest draws. All year long I leave my 175W mercury vapor light on, controlled by a photocell. All lights in the house are the electronic curly-cue wonders (made ZERO difference in bill) along with my 84w RAB motion light outside (they SUCK in winter - takes about 5 minutes to get brighter than a cigarette lighter), and even still I've trained the wife to always whack the switch when leaving a room - that's the way I was raised, so that's how I operate.

I remember when our old well pump was failing, our electric bill was all over the place. There was no consistency. One month would be 400kwh .. the next 800, no matter what time of year. It ended up blowing the capacitor from the amp draw. Filled the basement with thick, smelly smoke! Probably PCB mist knowing this place ...

What pisses me off about the electric bill, is when I was working I was running two 13,000+ btu window A/C's PLUS a 3rd 6k btu unit .... and my electric bill was $20 cheaper than it is now. But when I was working, we had a different guy in the White House that never said my electric bills would "necessarily skyrocket" ....

smitty, where you live I think your electricity cost is going to be a bit higher than $.06 or $.08/KWH. That's just your supply cost, you have to add in delivery cost for your total price/kwh. .08/KWH is midwest coal-fired generation prices not northeast prices.

Mine averages around $100 bucks and most of that is for my electric hot water heater. I am working on getting a pre-heater for it, or hooking it up to my boiler, but that costs money and being on lay-off right now, I cannot afford to do much...even if I know it would save me a lot of money in the long run.

Another big cost for me is keeping stock tanks for the sheep, chickens and ducks de-iced. I run thermostatically controlled water heaters for the stock tanks, but they still increase my bill in the winter months significantly.

SLOWLY, I am converting to propane appliances like a propane clothes dryer, propane range and as I said, do something to get my domestic hot water off from being electrically heated.