Alright, maybe I’m out of touch, but I don’t think electricity is expensive in California.
Even during 115 degree heatwaves in a 70-year-old, 3-bedroom, single-family home. Most I paid was $100 in a month with 2 people with gaming computers working from home.
Not everyone has that kind of money, but my point is that most people have cell service and other services which add up to more than electricity costs.
That’s fine, I make no judgement of what people spend. I’m just setting a comparison. For how much value electricity provides us and how much we use it, I wouldn’t call it expensive, even in California.
YMMV by city, but it wasn’t an issue in Sacramento. The real monster is climate change, and so here we have a chicken-and-egg problem combined with wealth disparity.
I think we need comprehensive social program packages to address this.
With the latest PG&E rate hike, my off-peak rate is 33c/kwh and the highest peak rate in 66c. I think the national average is 19c? That seems like a pretty drastic difference to me.
How? It's $0.52/kwh here, and before that rate increase, we were paying (edit) $278/mo in the summer for similar (70 year old 3 bedroom house), and slightly lower temepratures.
Another factor is topography. Ohio is pretty flat and running power lines around it is not that hard. California is big and has lots of rugged terrain. It costs a lot more to bring power to the small town in the California mountains, and those costs have to be paid by the urban and sub-urban customers of our large state-wide utilities.
In reality - PG&E has been soaking the ratepayer for decades while doing terrible maintenance - and now gets to soak the ratepayer again while fixing all the terrible issues they themselves created in the least efficient method possible.
Keep in mind PG&E rates had to cover billions in stock buybacks, billions in dividends annually, hundreds of millions in fighting municipal power, and billions in profit annually. The terrain isn't the problem, greed is.
Time-of-day program with SMUD. Ran the AC as cool as it could go before peak, turned it off during peak. At move-in we dumped multiple feet of insulation (more than code requires) into the place. At worst it got to 80 degrees.
Might have been a bit over $100, but I’m just as flabbergasted at your $278.
> Alright, maybe I’m out of touch, but I don’t think electricity is expensive in California.
This was your first comment in the thread.
If you don't want the point of your original post to be missed, don't make it cryptic and have surprised pikachu face when multiple people miss your point. We are not attending a stand up comedy here to understand your tone in this text format.
FYI, a monthly bill is essentially useless information. How big is your house? What are you using it for? How efficient is your fridge? Your A/C? How much is the fixed cost part of the bill? Etc.
I'm assuming, since you mention Sacramento and peak hours, these[0] are your rates? Next time, share those so folks in other places can compare. That page has these:
Summer:
* Off-peak: $0.1425 kWh
* Mid-peak: $0.1967 kWh
* Peak: $0.3462 kWh
Non-Summer
* Off-peak: $0.1151 kWh
* Peak: $0.1590 kWh
That's pretty high, but I think middling to low for California. For comparison, in my town outside Chicago, we have a year-round all-day rate of $0.12 kWh.
I’m picking up a sentiment from the downvotes so let me defend: I’m not lying lol.
SMUD time of day. Ran the AC super cold during the night (so it would run the entire off-peak period). Ran it somewhat cool during mid-peak. Didn’t use it at all during peak.
Other appliances I only ran at night.
Installed lots of insulation at move-in.
Like I said in OP, Sacramento. YMMV.
But in any case I’d argue $360 is still not expensive per se given the value you’re getting. How many square feet were you cooling? What else was operating?
It’s just about perspective. I was responding to the claim that electricity is expensive.
That's because you're on SMUD, not PG&E, so you're not getting charged to cover the maintenance and liabilities of above-ground high-voltage power lines going into a forest on a mountain in the middle of nowhere.
yeah, there's absolutely no "maybe" about it, you are definitely out of touch :). I don't know in what way exactly, but something is off. What is your per kwh rate exactly? You might be getting some kind of subsidies that you are not aware of, perhaps? I used to live in a 1200 sqft house in LA without any AC or anything consuming too much electricity, and 10 years ago before all the rate hikes I was still paying more than $100/month in west LA.
Even during 115 degree heatwaves in a 70-year-old, 3-bedroom, single-family home. Most I paid was $100 in a month with 2 people with gaming computers working from home.
Not everyone has that kind of money, but my point is that most people have cell service and other services which add up to more than electricity costs.
That’s fine, I make no judgement of what people spend. I’m just setting a comparison. For how much value electricity provides us and how much we use it, I wouldn’t call it expensive, even in California.
YMMV by city, but it wasn’t an issue in Sacramento. The real monster is climate change, and so here we have a chicken-and-egg problem combined with wealth disparity.
I think we need comprehensive social program packages to address this.