How do Texas residents afford electricity during high-demand?
How do Texas residents afford electricity during high-demand?
Whenever they have a spike in demand, the de-regulated prices go up by several hundred percent. Example
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Maybe it depends on your energy provider and whether you have a fixed rate or variable rate plan? I don't know if other places have those options or not. Check out powertochoes.org if you don't know what I mean. Mine just went up from $200 to $300 this month with the heat. My highest is usually 1-2 months of ~$350.
$350? 😭 ive never had an electric bill above $150
In Texas? It's 600 degrees here today. Friend refers to it as Satan's asshole.
His name is Dan Patrick.
Took me a day to realize that abbot was Satan and Patrick was his asshole.
What part of Texas are you in? Here in the Austin area, it was like 85°F. It was super nice. Looks like it's gonna be nice tomorrow as well.
Dallas. We're 97-101 the next few days, then it drops to 90 with a chance of rain Thursday and Friday. Glad I'm not in Houston sweating without electricity!
In the apartment I just moved out of, even after several complaints I had summer electric bills $600+ and it was still hot...night before I moved it was 91 outside and 89 inside. So far my new apartment is better but haven't seen any electric bills yet
Arizona here. My August service bill is the highest of the year, usually ends up around $425 or so with the thermostat set to ~76. January is usually the lowest, and I can get that down to about $75. Averages out to about $220/mo over the year. It's ridiculous.
I live in Wisconsin where it can get down to -20 before wind-chill in the winter and the heat index pushes 100 in the summer, plus our summers are basically always 100% humidity for months at a time. My house was built before the turn of the century (the 19th century specifically) and both my furnace and AC are on their last legs. With all that said, I get $250 bills in the summer months and it pushes close to that in the winter, but during the spring and fall when it's a lot more reasonable they can get under $100
They just make a lot of money or lived outside their means. When people mention big AC bills, they’re cooling 2000sqft homes to under 70F 24/7. No idea why American culture does this insanity.
I get by just fine with 78F during the day and a little lower at night, it even gets a bit cold when the compressor runs. Low low bills even when it’s 110 (not hyperbole, that’s the literal temp) outside.
Additionally every degree higher it gets outside, the less efficient your AC/heat pump gets so you need more power to hit the same temp even after accounting for the higher heat differential.
I had 300 dollar bills peak season in one bed apt before due to poor insulation. Being poor sucks. I thought it was a good deal until the bills came in lol
My average bill is $350, with summer months reaching ~$650. But, I have 3100 sq feet with 7 people at home and 2 EVs. Including monthly service fees, my per kWh cost works out to 11.9 cents.
Who's your provider? My plan is about to expire. I'm looking at Octopus for 13.4 cents.
SRP, but they only operate in Phoenix, AZ.
2400 sq ft. Just two of us now, but I'm home in the day during the summer and we have frequent guests. In past years we had elderly mom and nursing care here so we had to keep it comfortable all day. We heat/cool upstairs only at night, downstairs only in the day and close vents in unused rooms. Our mid-90's HVAC can't get to 70°. We did get an electric pellet grill last year and we've been using it a lot to keep from heating the house. I wonder how much that adds.
We did get an electric pellet grill last year and we’ve been using it a lot to keep from heating the house. I wonder how much that adds.
A rule of thumb I heard from datacenters is to count every watt of power consumption as 3 to account for the additional demand on the cooling systems and battery backup, so an electric grill probably saves a ton of energy over the oven given it isn't heating up the house
What’s your dew temp?