Your last power bill

This is what we have paid for the last several months...month/kw used/days/cost

May 392 30 59.730
June 276 28 44.200
July 358 32 51.570
August 477 29 70.040
Sept 493 34 74.530
Oct 390 28 58.000
Nov 415 29 61.470
Dec 540 29 78.630

Actually, our KW of 540 last month was the highest in about 3 years....actually broke down and put up some xmas lights
Family of five, and we have oil heat.

I have Progress Energy, but I heard recently that they were bought by Duke. I wonder if that will be good or bad for us?

I usually run about $45 through the winter. But my last bill was $30.28. I don't watch tv. All I run is a fridge, radio, computer, fan on the wood furnace and a few lights. I haven't been using any water or running the dryer as I ran my well over and I don't have $ to have it fixed. But I have been getting my exercise Cutting a hole in ice with a axe. And hauling 15 to 25 gallons of water a day for the bathroom and my horse's water trough from the creek.

Billy

Wow kinda know it tougher but there is a silver linning!

$70 for power--musta been the christmas light thing? or probably all the time i'm on the computer (hearth.com)
$10 for gas

Yeah K, Im in Bryson City.

Progress here also. I've read a little on the merger, not much positive for Progress ratepayers longterm. Duke needs $$$ to move to more nuclear production. Here in Florida, I'm already paying $8 a month for a nuke plant that may never be built. Nice!

September: 1216 kwh $175.08
October: 507 kwh $76.93
November: 484 kwh $73.91
December: 728 kwh $99.77
January: 667 keg. $93.52

Oh, bless you wonderful people! You have all brought a smile to my face tonight as I skimmed through everyone's power charges!! ;-P My January bill was $518 to heat a 1,700 sqft two-story (and let's face it, I'm in VA, not exactly the blizzard capital of the world!)!!

The previous bill was one of my "low" ones of $294, but my "budget" amount is about $360 per month and has been averaging $300+ for YEARS. Reading the comments above has served to further underscore to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that something is bad wrong with my situation.

see thread over in Wood Boilers for the full scoop: http://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/70757/

In short, I am on a quest to find the cause for this obscenely huge power bill, and vanquish it!! :O)

$116 here for 927 kw electric every thing stove,dryer,hot water,water well pump,cfl light bulbs 3 kids 2 adults i guess that not bad for a family of 5.... no cable bill no monthly gas bill only paid 480 worth of fuel oil since dec 3rd and still have $120 worth of fuel oil left have about little over a cord of wood left hope thats all i need for the rest of this yr...

LOL! Yeah, your neighbor is feeling a "Pro-Pain" all right! My sister has a big old farmhouse that they converted to a gas-assisted heat pump of some variety, and it is not unusual for them to get a $600-$700 gas bill ON TOP OF a $200-$300 power bill!

Just hope they don't give you MY meter! That thin don't know HOW to read under $275, even in the shoulder months!! =O)

I am certainly on the track to do SOMETHING different. I would love to burn wood if I can figure out the particulars and logistics of where, what, etc. If I thought I could end up paying less than $100 a month, I'd feel like I was stealing something! HA!

Y'all are scaring me.

It's rare that we get over 50 bucks even in the summer when running the AC.
2,500sqft heated with the Quadrafire 7100,CFL's everywhere, and only the clothes dryer is electric.

Propane for the on demand water heater,stove/oven and occaisional quick heat ups, ran us 600 bucks for last year.

In comparison, our 5hp constant pressure Irrigation well runs 24/7 from May through September and is on the same meter as the shop and barns.
It gets up in the 150-200 dollars range at commercial rates, when we are doing a lot of welding or running sorting lines.

Our rates are pretty good, but some of you guys are getting hammered!

I have been keeping track of my utility bills in excel since I moved into the house a few years ago. I have attached the charts that I keep. My power bill shows "peak" and "off peak" as I have 2 power meters, the off peak only runs at night and provides electricity at a lower rate. I only use it for me electric hot water heater.
You will also see that my electric bill goes up when it is cold, this is because I have a heat pump. You will also see that the power bill has slowly crept up since we moved into the house, as we "grew" into it, and since then has stabilized.

It is interesting being able to look at all this data. In addition to the added electricity costs due to the heat pump, I am also burning ~30-50 gal of oil/year and about 2 cords of wood (oil and wood are $440 - $500 combined.) The previous owners burnt 775 gallons the previous year (775g x $3.30 = $2557/year to heat the house ). I am saving a ton with the heat pump and wood!

Just what is your electric rate and kwh useage? I posted earlier that my last months bill was $265 for 1465kwh use. This month it is about $140 for 788kwh use, which is a low average. 2500sq ft and I use solar for DHW, currently using a wood stove, have a number of cfls. I have a gas dryer/cooktop/fireplace-propane at $4.00/gal with 120 gal fill last month, 110 gal oil top off last month at $3.30/gal so now I owe the oil/gas co. about $900. I typically use 500-800 gals/oil per year and don't use a lot of propane. Seems like all the bills converged on a perfect storm. I don't know how much more I can trim but I am working on it. 19.5 cents/kwh just really blows.

Steam,

Just checked the August bill. 240kwh @ 16 cents for the hooch, and January was 210kwh.

Heat is all on the Quad without using the remote runs, as the house is laid out for circular air flow, and gravity keeping the 2 second floor bedrooms toasty.

18" of combined blown insulation with 8" fiberglass S&R over 10" of blown cellulose, and insulated 2X8 walls.
Windows were the latest and greatest the wife approved of.

Dingeryote, I have to say I could never expect to get my kwh useage down to anywhere near that low. Of course I have teenage son at home and a daughter part time. Both use quite a bit of juice. My wife is not much better. Multiple computers and tvs running quite a bit. I monitor random things with my Kill-O-Watt meter. No big surpises. Just a lot of stuff. I did have an issue when I was away traveling for two months and my refrigerator defroster was stuck on. Nice big fat bill. House is about the same specs, maybe too many windows and certainly those ridiculous holes in my roof called skylights.

The annual report from our power company just arrived, combined total for regular electric, off peak hot water heater, and interruptible electric heat - 3 meters. Electric heat is only used to keep our basement at 50F during the winter and when we happen to be gone for more than a day during the winter, but typically alone is right around $200/year. July and August is high for regular due to the dehumidifier being on. Anyway, 12 month average total for regular, hot water, and heat combined for 2010 was 31 kwh/day, $3.12/day.

Sounds about where mine should typically be though at times this place sounds like a power station at times with everything running.

Mike

Just moved into our place a few months ago and the average has been around 75 bucks. Electric dryer, heat, and water heater.

We don't go out of our way unplugging chargers/power strips and the computer is on 24/7. I've put CFL's throughout the house but we try to turn them off in rooms not being used.

The summer will be a different story when we're running the AC's but it should stay under 150 / month.

In central PA (Allegheny Power) my all electric house costs about $250 per month averaged over the full year. My current rate seems to be about $0.094 per kwh. I am not sure if the rate has changed since deregulation, and I am not sure if the averaged cost reflects a new rate or some average of the new and old rate (if in fact rates have changed here). I use a lot more power in winter than in summer. With the wood stove, new in December, I am using a lot less this winter than last.