Electric bill up 20% from $120 to $145

Electricity usage can also vary a lot depending on habits, size of house, insulation, appliances, # of people, hours of occupancy, tolerance for heat/cold, whether there's any gas heating, and location.

I'm in a 5 bedroom house ~2500 sq ft. alone (long story) and since I'm not working at the moment, I'm home all the time. There is gas heating but I barely use it. If I use it, I set the thermostat to no higher than 62 F. I sometimes let it fall into the 50s. It can get quite cold here in the winter (sometimes a bit below freezing) and quite hot in the summer (sometimes 90-100+ F).

My baseline is 350 kwh. I used 317 kwh last month. I have no AC other than a portable rolling unit that hasn't been used since last summer. I have 1 desktop computer that I mainly use + 2 laptops.

It's amazing how much of a different power consumption can vary even w/LCDs, esp. newer ones.

My HP ZR24w 24" S-IPS LCD pulls ~45 watts when on (as measured by Kill-a-Watt). I bought it in mid-2010 and HP I believe still sells it today. I normally use a 2nd LCD at the same time (20" Dell 2001FP) and it pulls ~36 watts.

My dad recently bought a cheapo Acer H274HL BMID (I believe BMID is right) 27" which is almost certainly TN and it has an amazingly tiny power brick. In eco mode (which is more than bright enough), it pulls only 18 watts! I think part of it is due to its LED backlighting.

California has 16 different climate zones (Energy Maps of California). At least for non-residential, per California's Energy Efficiency Standards for Residential and Nonresidential Building regulations, for new construction, there are different mandates for the insulation, windows, etc. depending on the climate zone. The standards have evolved and become more stringent over time. Current one is the 2008 standard. There were 2005 standards and these before it: http://www.energy.ca.gov/title24/standards_archive/.

 

Wow - what an education on cost of electricity . . . learning about kWh, tiers, average cost per kilowatt hours - we're already a Tier 5 . . . then the "New Smart Meters" bump up the bills significantly. Just got my "EV Power Plan" just a couple of hours ago from SCE - suggesting ". . . hire an electrician to provide quote for install charging equipment and upgrading or adding to current electrical panel, etc." I have been getting a daily call from "Verango Solar" because I showed a little interest in their product.

 

In what way? They should have no effect unless if you've changed your rate schedule or your new or old meter is/was defective.

I strongly suggest everyone buy a P3 - Kill A Watt or one of the fancier versions to measure energy consumption of things around the house and to identify energy vampires and power pigs. I posted about one power pig I found at http://priuschat.com/forums/ev-elec...ify-lower-electricity-rate-2.html#post1339791.

 

After the Smart Meter was installed, bill went up $90 in 1st month and went up $10 the 2nd month . . . apparently I am not the only person that noticed a significant increase
Electric bill skyrockets after smart meter; opt-out option coming, but will cost - OC Watchdog : The Orange County Register.

Thanks for info on the P3-Kill a Watt . . . will purchase . . . I will be looking into solar - or max out on the Tiers . . . or maybe run a long extension cord to neighbors house.

 

Yep. I live in NM, and we will easily go below 200 kwh/month once I change out my electric water heater for gas.

 

New notebook computers and tablets are pretty remarkable energy savers. My MacBook air draws about 10-12 watts in use, and the iPad draws 3!

 

Yeah, the Macbook Airs use a pretty low power (but also a bit slow) series of Intel CPUs.

As I posted elsewhere, my Lenovo T61p w/Core 2 Duo T7500 pulls ~37 watts or so idling. It's significantly slower and less desirable to use than my faster i7-860 desktop w/2 large LCDs. The desktop idling, not including the 2 LCDs pulls about 2x the power of my laptop.

I also do have an iPad 2.

 

Just got my So Cal Edison bill and after an entire month of PIP usage- charging mostly 1 times a day and about 10 times 2 x a day, the electric bill went down... and the meter is read via wireless so it is an actual reading..
YEAH!

 

Slow is so subjective these days, and depends on the task as well as how the user interacts.

I used the G1 Air for years, and replaced it with a current gen Air two months ago. This 'book is more than fast for what I ask of it. 1.7 Ghz i5, 4 GB ram.

The story of the G1 Air was a bit odd. Over the past month of use the cover would not shut completely, and the original battery died completely. Since I take the 'book on the road, I needed something that would not discharge in my pack. My wife agreed to inherit it, if I bought a new battery.

Fair enough. The battery replacement is easy, and when I pulled the old one I found it had expanded and cracked its case. *That* was why the cover would not close! New thin battery put in for ~$40, and 'book as good as new (but dog slow compared to my new one ). Course my wife thinks it is a hot rod, compared to the 7 year old she had been using that died around the same time.

 

Well, for me, a Macbook Air or any Mac is the wrong job for most of my tasks (I did test Mac software for a living for 4 years and have an idle, currently almost never used old G4 Mac Mini).

It also likely wouldn't have the tools I need (like for transferring videos from my Tivo HD, running VideoReDo QuickScan Fix, then transcoding using Ripbot264). As I posted at, the transcoding of 44 minutes of video alone (not including all the other steps) archiving HD content from TiVo HD to DVDs for playback on XBox 360 or PS3? - Page 2 - TiVo Community, takes my Lenovo T61p 7 hours 20 minutes to transcode whereas my i7-860 can do it in 2 hours 2 minutes.

Disk space would also be a problem on an Air as I was struggling for disk space (since the transferred video files, intermediate files and output are huge) when I used the T61p for transcoding when it only had a stock 100 gig hard drive.

Back to this, baselines for PG&E are determined by the territory (Determine Your Baseline Quantity).

pge.com lets me see my electricity and natural gas use in a graph for every month vs. similar homes and vs. efficient similar homes. I'm below both of these for electricity every month and under similar homes for natural gas every month.

The "similar homes" includes some that are much smaller, to boot. Per their tool:

 

1100-1700 kWh is what my house uses each month. Unlike the coastal cities, the inland desert regions require cooling during many months of the year, at high costs. But I wouldn't trade my rural setting for city life no matter how nice the weather. As a system administrator, Macs are a blessing, Linux is great, and Windows is hell on earth.

 

I gave up on transcoding when I realized streaming is 'good enough' for our family, but I remember about 1.5x speeds overall. Perhaps your slow speeds are from HD content.

 

"You own obsolete gear a year after it's installed." I think your wrong.

In 1956 Bell Labs invented solar power. They collected the blue and red light spectrum. Now in 2012 blue and red is still it. I grant you there has been improvements in thin film panel cost, but at a 50% reduction in productivity. To increase your productivity on your roof, you need to buy the most efferent panels on the market. Sunpower has an E20 327 watt panel that will increase your output substantially. They also have lease plans that will suit your needs. I am a sunpower customer and am very pleased with there install. They are not the cheapest, just the most efferent. As of Feb, 2012 I have re-cooped $4,200.

Warranty:
Panels 20 years.
Inverted 10 years.

http://us.sunpowercorp.com/cs/BlobS...download&blobcol=urldata&blobtable=MungoBlobs

My Solar Videos of install, payback, link to free monitoring system.

The install may not be average but, a lot of thought went into it.

Vern

 

Yes, the only content that I'm bothering w/this is HD content.

The problem is that if I don't transcode, the .mpg files (produced by decrypting the .tivo files using TiVo File Decoder) are usually too big to fit on a 4.7 gig single-layer DVD +/-R for an hour of video and second, they usually (always?) don't play at all/correctly or with sound on a game console. I've tried w/smaller/shorter shows/segments.

So, I have to transcode and make AVCHD discs (after a bunch of steps) in order for my PS3 (and many BD players) to play them. It also means I can cram ~2 hours of HD video onto a 4.7 gig DVD +/-R w/little quality loss.

Standard def stuff I just archive using my standalone DVD recorder since it's way less work.

 

Did you know that you can produce electricity by pointing a semi-conductor at that yellow glowing object?

Here in (not so sunny) Maine, Solar panels are running between $0.16 and $0.20 per kWh*. That is, the monthly payment for the panels is less than the electricity it replaces if one is paying more than $0.16-0.20/kWh.
I find it hard to believe that in sunny California, with electric rates at $0.29, one can't do better with solar.

* Home improvement loan @ 4.01%. Solar panels between $4 and $5 per peak watt, installed. 4.1 average solar hours per day.

 

It's not $0.29/kwh in CA. See EIA - Electricity Data say it's 15.5 cents for residential.

My PG&E electric bill last month came out to ~13.5 cents/kwh because I was under the baseline.

 

I'm real concerned too about my energy usage after getting my plug-in. I haven't had the car for a full month yet, but so far I'm tracking at 15% higher usage than the same time last year.

We're looking at getting solar PV panels installed for the house, since we're already in Tier 3, and the car will most likely push us up to Tier 4. Any solar recommendations for the LA region?

 

:rockon:

The only caveat I would add is that the inverter has a life of 10-15 years, so it is probably fair to add another $1 to the $/watt installed.

I was playing with PVWatts yesterday for my locale. Average daily insolation of ~ 6.5 kwh/meter_squared after 20% DC to AC derating. So even the rather crappy 14% efficiency panels give me close to a kwh a day from each square meter of panel.

Cheers, from sunny New Mexico

Now if only my republican controlled neighborhood Assn would let me put them up.

 

I think that 29 cents/kwh number came from a poster who pays that amount for his tier 3 or 4 consumption

 

Ok. :embarassed::redface: Thanks for the refresher... those were his marginal rates once he's up into those tiers and not his total average rate.

If solar is as cheap as Corwyn claims, then enough solar to take the OP below those expensive tiers would make sense along w/taking measures to conserve along w/possibly going to TOU based billing. The OP might not be able to have his cake and eat it too (possibly get cheaper overall bills/charging while being able to charge at any time).

I don't know if the OP's usage before the PiP were considered high for his area and size of his house and don't know his baseline and tiers.