Ask HN: How is everyone electric bill looking like?
Since last year, my electric bill has spiked by over $200 (currently $500/month). This is way bigger than the gas issue, and no one is covering it. I am having to turn on only one monitor at a time to save costs.
I know the summers in Texas have been hot with the Air Conditioners, but this spike is unbelievable. There’s probably a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of energy efficiency improvements you could make. Many of them don’t cost much money and will show an immediate impact. When you do that, switching to a heat pump is cheaper because you don’t need as large of a system. When you go solar, it’s cheaper because you don’t need as many panels or microinverters. Our local utility sends out an energy scorecard ever 6 months that tells you how you compare to nearby houses of the same size. We’ve managed to get our house into the lowest 10% consumption group, and yet we still could do better with insulation. Near zero (sometimes electric co owes me) Solar on the roof is awesome. Its looking ok. Renewables lowered the costs us, despite our bad power managment. At least its not that bad as the Texan system. Next question please