Must Keep the Cold Air Flowing
Jul. 28th, 2009 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigo_rose99I got and paid my electricity bill today. Ick, ick, ick.
The bill seemed... high. Really high. What is typical for this time of year? What is an unreasonable cost?
I mean $254 may not seem like a lot for a month of electricity, but it seemed atypical to my gut. But, according to the graph, this bill was reasonable to everything but *gulp* my checkbook. Yes, I know it is "only" the second highest electricity bill EVER. Ugh. And the most expensive (+$3) was on the old electricity plan.
Yes, I am on an "electricity plan." Like a cell phone plan, but with my electric company. I stay with them for 5 years, they give me cheaper rates. Mostly it seems to work. The SureValue in the graph is the rate plan, and "old" is the previous lack of rate plan.
But... but... but... we cut back! I set our house temperature 3 degrees hotter (ick!) at night, and 1 degree hotter during the day! Surely that got me SOMETHING?!
Ok, what about my kilowatt hour usage? How did that compare?
Ok, kilowatt hours usage in the most recent bill is... almost typical. So the good news is that the new AC unit ("before" new AC vs "after" new AC) is probably helping a lot. With the outside temperatures so high, this kilowatt hour usage seems pretty good.
The ultimate curse? Price per kilowatt hour. That is what gouges us so badly. It isn't that we are really using an unusual amount of electricity to cool our house. It is that the COST of what we are using has gone up. Yes, I do consider $0.14 per kilowatt hour pretty good compared to what it had been before I went on SureValue ($0.16 per kilowatt hour in 2006). Still... I miss the sweet 2004 days of $0.11 per kilowatt hour. *wistful sigh*
And the sad part? I still have it pretty good. Newer AC unit, lower-cost electricity plan, increased ambient house temperature... It would have been a lot worse without all of this.
The bill seemed... high. Really high. What is typical for this time of year? What is an unreasonable cost?
I mean $254 may not seem like a lot for a month of electricity, but it seemed atypical to my gut. But, according to the graph, this bill was reasonable to everything but *gulp* my checkbook. Yes, I know it is "only" the second highest electricity bill EVER. Ugh. And the most expensive (+$3) was on the old electricity plan.
Yes, I am on an "electricity plan." Like a cell phone plan, but with my electric company. I stay with them for 5 years, they give me cheaper rates. Mostly it seems to work. The SureValue in the graph is the rate plan, and "old" is the previous lack of rate plan.
But... but... but... we cut back! I set our house temperature 3 degrees hotter (ick!) at night, and 1 degree hotter during the day! Surely that got me SOMETHING?!
Ok, what about my kilowatt hour usage? How did that compare?
Ok, kilowatt hours usage in the most recent bill is... almost typical. So the good news is that the new AC unit ("before" new AC vs "after" new AC) is probably helping a lot. With the outside temperatures so high, this kilowatt hour usage seems pretty good.
The ultimate curse? Price per kilowatt hour. That is what gouges us so badly. It isn't that we are really using an unusual amount of electricity to cool our house. It is that the COST of what we are using has gone up. Yes, I do consider $0.14 per kilowatt hour pretty good compared to what it had been before I went on SureValue ($0.16 per kilowatt hour in 2006). Still... I miss the sweet 2004 days of $0.11 per kilowatt hour. *wistful sigh*
And the sad part? I still have it pretty good. Newer AC unit, lower-cost electricity plan, increased ambient house temperature... It would have been a lot worse without all of this.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-29 04:12 am (UTC)Shouldn't the plot take into account outside temperature? "Degree Days" and all that fun?
BTW, you might be interested in the following:
http://www.google.org/powermeter/howitworks.html
no subject
Date: 2009-07-29 04:22 pm (UTC)Interesting powermeter. My electric company is even on the list. I am caught between the desire for More Better Data and sinking feeling of Privacy Invasion (ack!). When it rolls out to people like me, we will see which feeling wins.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-30 05:01 pm (UTC)Weather underground has a pretty good historic temp history. You can go to "custom", select a date range, then export the data as csv.
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KNCRALEI48
wolfram alpha also has a bunch of weather history. I think you can do sophisticated queries on max and min temp, but all I've tried is:
weather city,state 2008
historical weather highs and lows
Date: 2009-07-30 09:53 pm (UTC)It still does not augment my electricity data in a useful way -- my analysis leads me to conclude that my power usage for this past month is what I predicted it would be, given recent temperatures. Ho hum. Of course my estimate has a wide prediction interval (welcome to statistics!), so... *shrug* Perhaps not so useful.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 04:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 11:34 am (UTC)