Huh, the ones I get from PG&E regarding my gas usage are pretty consistent. They pretty much always tell me I’ve doing better than average, but not quite as good as my “efficient neighbors”. Back when I had gas heat I was doing way better than even my efficient neighbors, probably because I always kept the thermostat quite low. Now that I replaced the gas furnace with a heat pump I don’t think they compare me to homes do use gas heat.
My first thought: what are they selling?
My second thought: bug in the program
There’s a device you can use to measure how much electricity a plugged in device uses. But usually AC accounts for a big chunk of usage. Unless the bill goes way up in the summer, that’s not it
My letter information tells me how much I saved using my limited solar system. I pay a premium to have the solar system at all. It usually cancels out my savings.
Because the co-op we’re members with are the biggest assholes ever. That dividend check is so low as to be laughable.
I get no props for owning my own electric poles. In fact they kinda hate me cause I do.
It’s a racket. Mafia level, at least.
4400kWh/year does seem pretty high for an all-gas one-person apartment. When I lived in by myself in a 800sf all-gas one-bedroom apartment in the Baltimore area, my total annual use was only a little over 2000kWh/year.
It would be worth at least looking at your monthly usage to see how it varies. If the bulk of your usage comes during air-conditioning months, you may be affected by ineffective insulation or air sealing. If the usage is pretty consistent month-to-month, the usage is more likely due to day-to-day appliances. The first thing to look at would be the fridge: if it’s more than 10 years old, it may use a lot more power than a newer unit.
It’s probably worth getting a “Kill-A-Watt” plug-in power monitor to see how much the fridge and other appliances actually use per day.
Of course, matching your “efficient neighbors” by reducing your use by 2500kWh/year will only save you $375/year ($31/month) at Chicago electric prices of $0.15/kWh, so upgrades/repairs to achieve that may or may not pay off.
Having just looked at my own energy usage for the year, that does seem kind of high. I live in an ~1140 sq ft single family house, and I used less energy last year (3,450 kWh) than @Jasmine and I have an electric heat pump for my heat source. Granted, that’s in California where I don’t need much heat, but conversely we have very hot summers so I’m most likely using way more AC. And I was working from home all summer, so there was no “turning off the AC when I leave for work”.
I have heard stories where one tenant in an apartment building was mistakenly getting billed for the electricity for the common areas of the building. I almost wonder if something like that is going on.
Isn’t it in their economic interest to encourage us to use as much power as possible?
Not really. There’s an optimal amount for people to be using, then generation and transmission concerns would get in the way. Expanding those is costly and time consuming (assuming they even can with regulatory concerns).
Electric company’s and Co-op have you by the hair of the head.
We wanted to be completely off grid when we built here. They threatened to sue us if we didn’t connect to them.
But there were no poles to run the lines.
We weighed the costs of defending a lawsuit from a huge Co-op or buying 24 poles and having them erected. It was cheaper to buy the poles. That were owned by the Co-op, mind you. They kindly offered, for a tidy fee to erect them. We won that one. Mr. Wrek had access to heavy equipment and did that part himself. They frowned and inspected, scratched their butts standing around trying to figure out a way to say it wouldn’t work.
Had to accept them and ran the wire and a crappy transformer that flickers my lights if a bird lands on it.
So in a effort to have power when the crappy lines failed(and they do, on the regular) we have a whole house generator and some solar. The well pump has a stand alone generator.
It’s hell in the back woods.