Posted on 03/30/2022 7:39:43 AM PDT by george76
Customers to pay 3x as much during 'peak' hours..
DENVER — Xcel Energy will soon start charging higher electricity rates during peak hours, and that is causing a lot of confusion and anxiety among customers like Tamara Casillas.
“I’m a grandmother and I’m on a pension,” Casillas said.
She points out that families are paying more for everything right now, from groceries to gas.
“With inflation and everything that’s going on in the world, things are going to go up a little, and it’s getting harder and rougher for everybody,” she said.
So, Xcel’s announcement that it will be raising rates is yet another blow to her budget.
Customers will pay nearly three times more during peak hours versus off-peak hours. Peak hours are defined as 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays, just as families are getting home from school and work.
“That’s when we’re home watching TV,” Casillas said. “The kids are on laptops or computers doing their homework. A lot of energy is used at that time - cooking, dishwashers, stoves.”
“It’s going to cost me three times as much to cook a pizza at 5:30 p.m. as it does at 7:01,” said a Centennial father of two.
You can opt out of the Time of Use program.
“I’ve sent them two messages saying, ‘If I opt out of this – what’s the flat rate?’” said the Centennial man. “I haven’t been able to get an answer. That’s why I contacted you guys.”
We contacted Xcel on his behalf and yours and got a response. If you opt out of the time-of-use rates, you pay $0.12 cents per kilowatt hour in the winter and $0.14 cents in the summer.
If you opt in, you pay $0.10 cents per kilowatt hour during off-peak hours in the summer and $0.28 cents during peak hours in the summer. In the winter, you pay $0.10 cents per kilowatt hour during off-peak hours, and if you opt-in, you pay $0.17 cents during peak hours.
“I didn’t even see the option to opt out in their literature they mailed,” said the Centennial man. “You get told what’s going to happen and when you have questions – you get no response from them.”
Casillas also wonders how this will impact Xcel’s budget billing.
“Last year – budget billing was $70 dollars a month,” Casillas said of Xcel’s budget program. “This year – it’s already $90/month.”
She, too, questions the transparency of this new pricing structure.
“To be sneaky is just not fair to us,” Casillas said.
Has anyone seen a chart of the 50 State’s and rulings like this in correlation with voting?
Women and minorities hardest hit.
Half..in sunny Texas you can sell power to the grid ERCOT is by law obligated to take solar first on the wholesale market at full market price if you are smart enough to incorporate with an LLC the minimum system size is 15kw to the grid bid at 15 min increments software can and does handle all the bidding and reconciliation. My.part of Texas gets 220+ full days of.Sun and many partial days I haven’t played a power bill in years. During last Feb ice storm and blackout my panels made surplus 3 of 4 days my large home was the only one with power and lights and most importantly heat pumps. All my neighbors came over to warm up.charge phones and eat BBQ. I couldn’t have asked God himself for a better demo of off the grid mode on a full sized solar / inverter system. Every one of my neighbors now has at least 12,000 watts of panels some have 18me we have 4000+ sqft homes and huge roof lines. My panels are on trackers in the average behind the house since I rain water collect off my roof line I didn’t want panels with metals running off into that water. Trackers double your power output over a 12 month period as they follow the suns yearly cycle. Cheers mate.
Isn't Texas one of the ones saying they're going to change the law to force you to pay something like $5 per month for every kW of your system, and lower how much the utility pays you for your excess kW?
“You voted for this, enjoy the suck”
I guess you voted for Biden so you enjoy the suck.
Gonna be pretty costly to charge those EV’s. And how about that force conversion to Electric heat the democrats have been pushing around lately. I am pretty sure that people can’t chose when they need heat.
“As a residential consumer, I have done that also.”
Me too. In our case the off-peak rate was a lot lower than the constant-rate option and we saved money while enduring occasional inconveniences.
Basically it’s a billing system in which you pay for the generator (your peak usage) and the fuel (the total kwh that you consume).
The world’s situation now is that certain places are short on fuel, not generating capacity. The time-of-use scheme won’t help that unless it causes total kwh consumed to decrease.
Exactly.
For decades we have been tearing out power plants, replacing them with green energy, and not working the balance.
If they go to all e vehicles, we will be in rolling blackouts with most people not being able to use their Tesla
“For decades we have been tearing out power plants, replacing them with green energy”
Hopefully the people of the world are learning several lessons. Mother Theresa said that wisdom is achieved through suffering.
This must be why they pushed the smart meters so hard.
Yes. Part of the 2030 reset goal
Sorry so late to respond.
There’s some folks from 1Solar coming out to my house next Tuesday morning.
The way they were selling this is that once installed, an array would cut my average bill in half.
I’m currently writing down a bunch of solar powered questions that I plan to ask them when they arrive.
And, NEVER vote dim.
Did you look at your past year’s power bills? You need dollar amounts paid each month and total kWh consumed that month.
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