Natural gas prices in the eastern US are meaningfully lower than they were 1 year ago.
I respectfully disagree. At least with the data up to November, at least in Alabama. When I go to https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3010al3m.htm to see the average natural gas costs to Alabamians it shows that Nov 2022 (the latest month for the data) was 19.80, but Nov 2021 was 17.7. The Henry Hub spot prices on the market (which are updated daily) agree with you that right now in February 2023 gas prices are lower than in February 2022. However, it's been my experience that the Henry Hub prices deviate from the real world prices we pay. So I'll reserve judgement on if real world gas prices have come down like the Henry Hub prices did until we get data for the past few months on real world gas prices consumers pay.
I go through that process once per month as part of studying data for my energy project where I added solar to my house, liked it, converted my two natural gas appliances to electric (thus I no longer get a nat gas bill), liked that even though I installed it right before winter, and thus completed the project by getting an EV and upgrading my solar system to the full system I wanted all along (after confirming through the prior steps and studying the data and costs to confirm it was worth going in that far). This last step was completed end of August last year.
Once per month (I love data LOL) I enter a few data points in a TSQL database and Excel spreadsheet and it all automatically calculates how much saved on gasoline by driving the EV (but add to my power costs), how much I save on natural gas costs (but also adds to power costs now that I heat my home and water with power), how much I save on power with solar producing 66.6% of the power we consumed this past billing period (not bad for a winter month), but also how much I had to pay with my new costs such as the HELOC payment and interest I pay for the low interest loan I took out to pay for almost all of this. The only data points I need are: power pulled from grid and how much it cost me, power my inverters report I consumed that billing period (most of which didn't come from the grid), odometer reading in the EV (to calculate miles driven), cost per gallon of gas at nearby gas stations (how much it would have cost in gasoline if most of our driving was still in ICE cars), and how much the average natural gas per cubic ft is for us Alabamians (which unfortunately is a few months behind, and doesn't match the exact price I used to pay but the rate of change does match my old rates of change, so a 5% increase in that data corresponded with a 5% increase in my old natural gas bill that month).
As the energy costs go up (on average), that's more money I save. As the HELOC balance is paid down, the HELOC payment goes down with it (more like a credit card payment than a mortgage payment). Thus as the years go buy it costs me less money (lower HELOC payment) to save money (avoiding most of the energy costs that mainly go up). Then the year after that it costs even less to save even more. Then after that it costs even less to save more. Etc.
That's how I'm trying to keep the Dims' stupid energy policies from draining mine and my wife's retirement financial plan with sky high energy cost inflation. I wish I could do that with other costs (i.e. grocery cost inflation).