2016 almost here

hoffse · November 2015

simplyelise said:

hoffse said:

bmo88 said:

@brij2006 Do people have separate bills for gas, water and electric? May be a dumb question, but curious. Here, it's all one bill. Also, do a lot of you have huge homes? Just curious with how high some bills are. Ours is between $125-$180 throughout the year for a 2,800 sq ft home.

It depends on climate but also state utility taxes. I live in a state with very high utility taxes, and our state is one of the very few where utility companies don't have to justify rates to the state legislature each year. They are all in each other's pockets. Nothing anybody can do about it.

Our water bill is stupid because my city went bankrupt a few years ago, and they are paying off creditors by hiking water/sewer rates each year.

Our house was an inefficient 2900 sq ft (up and down combined) ranch when we bought it. We have enacted some energy saving things - the biggest so far being insulating the attic. That has helped tremendously because there was virtually no insulation up there for the first 8 months we owned the house. I'm still budgeting based off of last year's numbers, so I'm hoping next year my utility budget will be lower.

Super interested in this because I work for municipally-owned utilities who make their rate decisions at the city level. Do you not have a public service commission? Or a requirement that the investor-owned utilities only recoup a reasonable return in profits? The utility and telecom industries definitely own most state legislatures, but usually the non-partisan, appointed, public service commissioners have jurisdiction over rate increase requests. My only guess is that maybe your state has a competitive energy market and you can choose your own provider? Even so, gosh, I would hope somebody there is trying to organize an initiative petition to regulate IOU profits. The utility regulation world is fascinating and horrible.

Nah we really only have one provider - Alabama Power.

They hold a "hearing" every December with the commissioners to implement rates, but it's behind closed doors and the public does not get to see the calculations used.

Last year they apparently filed their revenue calculations on December 1. Then they announced the new rates on December 2. The meeting to approve it was "held" a week later.

So yes, we do have a public service commission, but it's a pure dog and pony show, and they don't really even bother pretending it's legitimate.

julieanne912 · November 2015

bmo88 said:

@brij2006 Do people have separate bills for gas, water and electric? May be a dumb question, but curious. Here, it's all one bill. Also, do a lot of you have huge homes? Just curious with how high some bills are. Ours is between $125-$180 throughout the year for a 2,800 sq ft home.

I think you're in CO too. Where I live (outside of Brighton city limits), we have Xcel for gas, United Power for electricity, a metro district for water, and we have septic so no sewer. There's also now a separate stormwater bill as of this year, but that's annual and is only like $75. When we were renting in Aurora, Xcel handled both gas and electric. United Power is a co-op, so we actually get a little money back every year from them.

Our home is 1850 sq ft ranch with an 1850 unfinished basement. It's new so it's very well insulated... our March bill last year for heating was only around $60.

Water is our largest bill, at least in the summer. But, our new district here is way less than when we were on South Adams County water. Our bills there were $150+ a month just to water a front lawn in the summer (had zeroscape in the back). This year our highest bill was $180 to water 4,500 sq ft of front lawn, but we were watering it 3xs a day for the first month since it was new and it was so hot.

simplyelise · November 2015

hoffse said:

simplyelise said:

hoffse said:

bmo88 said:

@brij2006 Do people have separate bills for gas, water and electric? May be a dumb question, but curious. Here, it's all one bill. Also, do a lot of you have huge homes? Just curious with how high some bills are. Ours is between $125-$180 throughout the year for a 2,800 sq ft home.

It depends on climate but also state utility taxes. I live in a state with very high utility taxes, and our state is one of the very few where utility companies don't have to justify rates to the state legislature each year. They are all in each other's pockets. Nothing anybody can do about it.

Our water bill is stupid because my city went bankrupt a few years ago, and they are paying off creditors by hiking water/sewer rates each year.

Our house was an inefficient 2900 sq ft (up and down combined) ranch when we bought it. We have enacted some energy saving things - the biggest so far being insulating the attic. That has helped tremendously because there was virtually no insulation up there for the first 8 months we owned the house. I'm still budgeting based off of last year's numbers, so I'm hoping next year my utility budget will be lower.

Super interested in this because I work for municipally-owned utilities who make their rate decisions at the city level. Do you not have a public service commission? Or a requirement that the investor-owned utilities only recoup a reasonable return in profits? The utility and telecom industries definitely own most state legislatures, but usually the non-partisan, appointed, public service commissioners have jurisdiction over rate increase requests. My only guess is that maybe your state has a competitive energy market and you can choose your own provider? Even so, gosh, I would hope somebody there is trying to organize an initiative petition to regulate IOU profits. The utility regulation world is fascinating and horrible.

Nah we really only have one provider - Alabama Power.

They hold a "hearing" every December with the commissioners to implement rates, but it's behind closed doors and the public does not get to see the calculations used.

Last year they apparently filed their revenue calculations on December 1. Then they announced the new rates on December 2. The meeting to approve it was "held" a week later.

So yes, we do have a public service commission, but it's a pure dog and pony show, and they don't really even bother pretending it's legitimate.

Oh man, someone needs to be FOIA-ing and sunshine requesting the crap out of that. It sounds horrible. Our PSC rate cases with the utility companies are also frequently decided before they're held, but thankfully we have plenty of big business interests that will sue on behalf of ratepayers and require the utility to prove their figures. But like you said, it can be impossible sometimes as big utilities have a lot of money tied up in lobbying and campaign contributions. Alabama and Missouri have the same limits on state campaign contributions in that they don't limit it at all. In MO we also have no limits on lobbyist gifts, so our big IOU, Ameren, usually pays for tons of legislator trips to Cardinals and Royals games or even sending legislators to out of state SEC games.

maple2 · November 2015

bmo88 said:

@brij2006 Do people have separate bills for gas, water and electric? May be a dumb question, but curious. Here, it's all one bill. Also, do a lot of you have huge homes? Just curious with how high some bills are. Ours is between $125-$180 throughout the year for a 2,800 sq ft home.

We also have separate bills for gas (actually propane in our case), water, electric, and sewer. In addition we have to hire a private company for trash/recycling pick-up or go to the transfer station ourselves. I am super jealous of everyone's low utility costs. Our water is really low (<$100/year), and electric isn't terrible (<100/month), but we can pay $600+ for propane in the winter. Our house is only 14,000 sqft. We have newish windows that we put plastic on and good insulation, but propane is expensive and taxes are high.

brij2006 · November 2015

maple2 said:

bmo88 said:

@brij2006 Do people have separate bills for gas, water and electric? May be a dumb question, but curious. Here, it's all one bill. Also, do a lot of you have huge homes? Just curious with how high some bills are. Ours is between $125-$180 throughout the year for a 2,800 sq ft home.

We also have separate bills for gas (actually propane in our case), water, electric, and sewer. In addition we have to hire a private company for trash/recycling pick-up or go to the transfer station ourselves. I am super jealous of everyone's low utility costs. Our water is really low (<$100/year), and electric isn't terrible (<100/month), but we can pay $600+ for propane in the winter. Our house is only 14,000 sqft. We have newish windows that we put plastic on and good insulation, but propane is expensive and taxes are high.

Propane is crazy here too. My parents have an old farm house that we grew up in. The propane cost to heat that sucker was $5,000/year.
They offered for my H and I to live in it for just the cost of heat, before we bought our home. It was still going to be about $415/month we would have had to put aside just to fill the propane tank during the winter months.

julieanne912 · November 2015

maple2 said:

bmo88 said:

@brij2006 Do people have separate bills for gas, water and electric? May be a dumb question, but curious. Here, it's all one bill. Also, do a lot of you have huge homes? Just curious with how high some bills are. Ours is between $125-$180 throughout the year for a 2,800 sq ft home.

We also have separate bills for gas (actually propane in our case), water, electric, and sewer. In addition we have to hire a private company for trash/recycling pick-up or go to the transfer station ourselves. I am super jealous of everyone's low utility costs. Our water is really low (<$100/year), and electric isn't terrible (<100/month), but we can pay $600+ for propane in the winter. Our house is only 14,000 sqft. We have newish windows that we put plastic on and good insulation, but propane is expensive and taxes are high.

Yeah my BFF lives in the mountains on propane and her bill is like $1,000/mo in the winter.... even after replacing the original 1950s windows and adding insulation. My H refused to buy a house or build one with propane for that reason.

I do hope you meant 1,400 sq ft instead of 14,000 though

maple2 · November 2015

julieanne912 said:

maple2 said:

bmo88 said:

@brij2006 Do people have separate bills for gas, water and electric? May be a dumb question, but curious. Here, it's all one bill. Also, do a lot of you have huge homes? Just curious with how high some bills are. Ours is between $125-$180 throughout the year for a 2,800 sq ft home.

We also have separate bills for gas (actually propane in our case), water, electric, and sewer. In addition we have to hire a private company for trash/recycling pick-up or go to the transfer station ourselves. I am super jealous of everyone's low utility costs. Our water is really low (<$100/year), and electric isn't terrible (<100/month), but we can pay $600+ for propane in the winter. Our house is only 14,000 sqft. We have newish windows that we put plastic on and good insulation, but propane is expensive and taxes are high.

Yeah my BFF lives in the mountains on propane and her bill is like $1,000/mo in the winter.... even after replacing the original 1950s windows and adding insulation. My H refused to buy a house or build one with propane for that reason.

I do hope you meant 1,400 sq ft instead of 14,000 though

Oops, yes, 1,400 sq ft.

2016 almost here

Re: 2016 almost here

Choose Another Board

Search Boards