“north/central Alabama was a huge cost in my power bill”
I think we ain’t seen nothing yet. I believe Alabama Power has increased rates by 20 to 25% and this summer has been HOT. My summer bill has been significantly higher than usual, even after making a/c repairman recommended house modifications (installed ridge vent and soffit vents). This is my estimate for this month:
This Month’s Bill Estimate
$166 - $225
This is last year’s bill for August:
Billed Amount
$106.37
That’s pretty crazy.
It's:
cost per kWh = (total bill - $15.60) / kWh pulled from grid
When comparing to the prior year's bills, before August 2022 change the $15.60 to $15.86 (they went down on their natural disaster recovery fee from 75 cents to 50 cents, and a 4% state tax makes it a 26 cent difference).
For example, my July bill was $40.67 for 160kWh, which comes to 15.6¢/kWh. A 25.8% increase YOY to last July's 13.1¢/kWh.
To be fair to the power company, much of that is from their energy cost rider. Basically, Obama made them shut down the Gorgas coal plant and replace it with more "clean burning natural gas" fueled power, only for Brandon to now declare natural gas the bogey man that's killing us all and making natural gas hard to come by (and expensive). So Alabama Power passes their fuel cost to you as a per kWh rider. They don't state that cost and other per kWh riders. However, they do state the exact fixed costs: $14.50 per month regular flat fee + 50¢ natural disaster recovery fee = $15 total flat fees + 4% state tax on that = $15.60 we pay every month even if we don't pull power from the grid. Anything above that is usage charge (including 4% state tax on all of that).
That's the math I went through a couple of years ago to help me decide whether or not it's worth going solar (which reduces only the per kWh charge, not the flat monthly charges) and also see if it's worth improving on the solar and/or improving efficiency of the house (i.e. adding insulation).
Here in Northern CT the power company raised the per kilowatt hour rate by 60% in January.
60%.
Any EV owners here got the “shock” of their lives.
Another thing I did was replace my natural gas water heater with a hybrid water heater (has a built-in heat pump to use when running in efficiency mode, and normal heat strips when running in normal mode like if we have extended family over). I wouldn't get it, though, if you have a large family still living at home. (With just my wife and me, our 50 gal water tank has enough hot water for the two of us to take a shower, but after that it takes 2 hours in the summer to 5 hours in the winter to reheat the tank in efficiency mode. That wouldn't be good enough when we were raising kids.) In efficiency mode it runs at 300W instead of 4kW like a standard water heater (or 12kW like an inline one). Plus, it runs shorter in the warm months because its intake draws warm air from the attic (thanks to a duct). And it helps cool the house because it outputs free cold air (which I pull in with a HVAC air intake installed in the floor of the closet the water heater is in). During the winter I flip two levers and the water heater's cold air output is ducted to the attic. During the warm 7-8 months I use the free cold air to help cool the house. Because I have a variable speed heat pump and air handler, my HVAC is almost always running even if it's in low mode. (In other words, any time of day the water heater runs, the cold air will be sucked in by the air handler.) This keeps my variable speed heat pump from having to operate on higher speed while the air it draws in is a little bit cooler than normal (because some of the air came from the water heater).