Home Electricity Power Options?
The power company is charging my girlfriend $900 - $1200 in fees every month. She's on fifteen acres with animals so moving is a ...bigger conversation w where we are in our lives. We live in seperate houses roughly 20 miles apart (I'm suburban, she's rural up a mountain) but both use the same power company, a regulated company, so afai can tell these are all legal charges. 225 dollars in usage, and almost 200 dollars in transmission and another 200 dollars in distribution fees every month or more!
We can do an energy audit but what options do we have to reduce her dependency on the power company? Small-scale solar? When we lived on a small homestead with animals, we burned some power taking care of the animals, but were able to do so off-grid by buying a small portable solar setup. You'll spend a few hundred to be up and running, but diminish how much you need to pull from the power company. Of course, that only makes sense if all the fees scale down with usage. If those transmission and distribution fees are not usage-based, it might not save much. Thats a good point, its actually not listed & I'll need to make sure they are usage. I believe they are from the amounts. We are looking at a grid tie-in solar system to avoid the upfront cost of batteries but we aren't committed either way. Typically the fixed fees are in the tens of dollars of month. The rest of it should scale off your usage. Is the property perhaps on a commercial account? Did she buy the land recently from a different owner? What is she using so much power for? If she ranching or doing some sort of energy intensive processing? Heating other buildings? Does your jurisdiction have time of use billing? What are your local laws about solar buy back? With that much acreage and usage, a solar setup might pay itself back pretty quickly. You can consider either just doing a standard grid tie setup where you sell power back to the grid, or use batteries to timeshift your generation and usage curves, or maybe even put parts of the operation off-grid altogether (with battery and generator backup). If she has a river or stream nearby, microhydro might be a possibility too. You can get a processional energy audit done, or if you're the DIY type, sometimes you can loan the tools (solar measurement tools, thermal cameras, energy meters, etc.) from your utility or some local energy nonprofit and learn to use them from YouTube. If you can describe her situation in more detail, I'd be happy to discuss some options. Not an expert, but went to school for this stuff and worked in renewables for a while. Thanks. We're going to do an energy audit, at-least cutting off breakers and observing the meter to start with. Her bill listed
222.84 in generation services.
188.86 in fuel factor at 0.0413900 per kWh.
176.04 transmission services
101.02 distribution services She does have a barn w a light for her horse but thats listed seperately for her bill. Her kWH usage is 4562 per month & I'm really not sure how she gets to that, she literally drives between 1 & 2 hours to work and back every day depending on location so she's only home in the evenings. > Her kWH usage is 4562 per month This is the part that seems quite high to me. All the other numbers scale off that, and in some jurisdictions, the high usage could put her in a higher pricing tier than a normal residence. An average house might use 1000 to 2000 kWh a month, for example. Of course her property is much bigger, but it would still be good to figure out what exactly is using the power. Knowing what's using that much could help you better evaluate solutions, mainly in knowing whether it's better to conserve or self-generate. Just random examples: If she's using electric resistive heating, a heat pump could save some money. If she's got a lot of lighting going on (big barn with old lights?), LEDs could help. Are there pumps running all the time? EV charging? Is someone crypto mining in a secret shed? Is there a miswired electric fence? Things like that... Is this all under one meter, or does she have multiple meters? You need to figure out how much is usage based, and how much is fixed fees. If she has multiple meters and some of the fees are per meter, it may be worth considering rearranging so there's fewer meters, although that may not be the best for future use. My house on 9 acres has 3 meters. One for the house, one for the well, and one for an outbuilding that was built before the house and used to be a woodshop. This arrangement would be handy if we subdivided and shared the well, or rented the shop to someone. Otoh, it's not very handy because the house is on a automatic generator and when utility power goes out, we have no water. One meter. She has a barn with putside light on a seperate meter but those charges were seperated on the bill. Her January bill listed
222.84 in generation services.
188.86 in fuel factor at 0.0413900 per kWh.
176.04 transmission services
101.02 distribution services Some taxes etc and a final charge of 1359.78. I'm remembering now that they did overcharge her & we talked about that w the power company getting a credit for the next bill. My mistake on that. But for the last several months her bill has consistently been extremely high, 900 this past month, 1100 a prior month. Her kWH usage is 4562 per month & I'm really not sure how she gets to that, she literally drives between 1 & 2 hours to work and back every day depending on location so she's only home in the evenings. If my math is right, that's an average load of 6 kW. You should be able to track down big loads like that pretty quickly, I'd think. Watch the meter, it's likely spinning quickly, turn off breakers and mark which ones have a big effect on the rate. Sometimes meters count too fast, but usually it's a couple % and more often is in the other direction especially with mechanical meters. Which state is she in, and who's her electricity provider? If she used 4562 kWh this month and her bill was between $900 - $1360, that means she's paying 19¢-29¢/kWh, which is quite high (but not impossibly so, especially in California or Hawaii): https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/ I'd first still do what everyone is suggesting (identifying the actual loads that are using so much power), but on top of that, it might be worth looking at the details of your utility's rate plan and comparing different ones (if they have them), or maybe even a different electricity provider if your state and jurisdiction allow those. (It's usually a case where you end up paying the electric utility for transmission, but someone else for generation... there are a lot of third parties that build out big solar/wind farms and then contract with the utility. But be careful and do your research carefully if you choose to go that route, since many of them are nearly scams that lure you in with an cheap upfront cost and then drastically raise your rate later. But then again, the utility itself can do that too, depending on state laws...) At the end of the day, once you identify the loads, you can better assess what combination of 1) conservation 2) time-of-use shifting or possible rate plan changes 3) insulation & lighting improvements 4) home solar/hydro 5) equipment upgrades to do (in order of least to most out-of-pocket costs). You're using enough power (as in abnormally so, unless you have some commercial/industrial loads on that land, like for ranching/processing/growing operations?) that you shouldn't just blindly throw solar at it without understanding what's using that much power to begin with. The solar should pay itself back regardless, but if you can lower the power draws to begin with and size your array accordingly, you don't have to get as big an array. Oversizing a solar array not only costs more upfront, but may have very limited returns because many jurisdictions cap what the utility pays you for home solar. If it's much greater than your actual usage, basically you just end up providing free (or nearly free) electricity for the grid. If she's usually away from home and there's no unusual loads going on, the house really shouldn't use that much power just idling. Check the circuits, major appliances (heating/cooling/refrigeration/space heating), lights (any old incandescents lying around, especially porch lights etc. that might be left on 24/7? grow lights for weed or other crops?). Hot tub? Heated driveway? Anything having to do with heating/cooling? For any plug-in appliances, you can also get a plug-in power meter (like a "Kill-a-Watt" or similar) to see exactly how much energy they're using over a day. If she uses a lot of hot water, consider solar water heaters or on-demand (tankless) water heaters, which can be more efficient than traditional models. Um, your math is off a bit. 225 + 200 + 200 is 625 not 900 to 1200. The first step is in determining the variable costs and the fixed costs. You can reduce the variable costs with self-generation, (solar, wind, hydro) fixed costs are likely fixed. So start with accurate costing and totals. Thanks. Yeah I was drawing up off memory & an old screenshot from January. Her bill listed
222.84 in generation services.
188.86 in fuel factor at 0.0413900 per kWh.
176.04 transmission services
101.02 distribution services Some taxes etc and a final charge of 1359.78. I'm remembering now that they did overcharge her & we talked about that w the power company getting a credit for the next bill. My mistake on that. But yeah for the last several months her bill has consistently been extremely high, 900 this past month, 1100 a prior month. Her kWH usage is 4562 per month & I'm really not sure how she gets to that, she literally drives between 1 & 2 hours to work and back every day depending on location so she's only home in the evenings. too expensive..