Friend of mine moved to a more rural area of NY state this past January, so he's getting a taste of what life is like having to top off propane and oil tanks. I'm not sure what the propane was going for, but the oil was almost $4/gal, and being a new customer he had to shell out for deposit and for the fill-up. Ouch.
Where I am in NJ, the electric rates have just about doubled since last year. I'm actually starting to look into a small wind generator for the house, but something tells me we're going to be running into a wall of NIMBYs and zoning regs. So here we go, electric costs too much and uses too many valuable resources, but we won't let you mediate your costs because the solution looks ugly. Explain to me why a damn Prius is allowed on the road, then. ;-)
“...something tells me we’re going to be running into a wall of NIMBYs and zoning regs. “
Exactly why we are loathe to give up the rural property and move anywhere with lots of people.
Wish we could utilize wind for electricity. We are in a valley and either have high winds or none. Then there are the battery considerations.
A friend ran the numbers for solar a few years back and concluded we are too far North with the sun at the wrong angle most of the time for it to be efficient. We looked into solar in 1999. It was too expensive with too long a payback. The battery storage was a problem, too.
We have insulated, new windows, close off part of the house all winter or just some days/parts of days, cut down on hot water useage, lowered hot water heater temperature and still, due to two home businesses (which are being negatively impacted by all this, so that is *something* that lowers usage), have about 1000 kwh of use most of the time, higher in winter when anything below zero for very long means making sure the cellar and the pipes are above freezing. It has gone from challenging to a PITA as we get older. This is a miserly sort of existence that we worked hard to not have over 34 years. Yet, one by one, our little conveniences or our few luxuries have been placed at or beyond the edge of our resources, especially with the declining consumer disposable income cutting our income and the nervous market affecting our savings/interest.
I just hope that as more and more formerly middle class Americans endure these conditions, we will force the government to change. I know it has to be impacting tax collections at every level, so they feel it, too.