electric utility bill

I'm in PA and also shop for the best electric rates. Yes, it's a game which some enjoy playing, but I don't. Spending a half hour every few months "shopping" rates to save $2 on my electric bill seems a waste. My time is worth more than $4/hr.

I've also been burned a couple of times by missing a contract end date. Suppliers are required by law to notify you when a contract expires but they don't always do so. The last one cost me $86, which wiped out all the savings I earned for the previous year.

When I complained to the supplier, I was told they sent me an email which I never received. I filed a complaint with the PA PUC and I later saw in the news that supplier was hit with a heavy fine for failing to notify customers

We have PPL here, and their default rates are usually within 1 or 2 cents of other suppliers. Unless there is a big swing in prices, I usually just pay a bit more for the convenience of not having to shop and watch the calendar for expiration dates.

Here in Albuquerque I don't get to shop, but the utility has a sweet deal for electric vehicle owners.

You sign up for the special program, they install a smart meter that takes separate account of power consumed between 10 p.m. and 5 am, and for that power you pay under 4 cents/kWhr.

The intent is both to encourage EVs, and to nudge EV owners to do their charging at night when the system is less challenged for supply.

I was paying 4.49 cents per KW on a 3 year contract. This was with Constellation. Got the notice that the contract was ending and I set out on a search for a new deal. The best I could find was 7.19 cents per KW at Constellation for another 3 year contract. So, my energy prices have went up a little over 50%.

I wish our prices were this low in IL. Comed (better name would be con-ed) has a rate of 6.577¢/kwh for the month of july for supply. In May it was 7.936¢/kwh. The rate of course is variable and consists of a base rate + modifier. The modifier used to be capped at +- .5¢, but that was removed sometime last year.

I'm currently with company called american power and gas for a supply rate of 6.39¢/kwh. This is marginally higher than the previous rate of 6.09¢/kwh I had with energy harbor (36 month agreement). Both of these are still better than being with the utility directly.

The people's republic of IL finds all sorts of creative ways to screw the home owner/apt dweller. On the last bill, the effective rate (total price/kwh used) was 16.4¢/kwh. There are 13 line items that comprise the delivery and taxes/fees portion!

I have a credit card that offers 5% back on utilities, so that helps a little. Gas, electric and water code properly. Same card also offers 5% back on internet and cell phone service. We have 2 of such cards as sometimes the internet/cellphone doesn't code correctly (thanks att). These are not quarterly categories, rather you choose from a list of categories yourself for each quarter.

My buddy looked it back up, it was not as cheap as I thought in FLA but cheaper than my price.

My buddy in JAX is 12.83 cents out the door, but this isn't a promo.

Mine is 13.416 but that's with the 5 cent promo. It's always felt funny--switching to a higher rate. Say come September, what if the higher rate is 7 cents. I cannot wait until the very last minute because maybe the promo goes to 10. So likely 2 weeks of the 5 cent will be wasted switching to a higher rate. The thing is consumption should drop by then....during the pandemic there were ZERO competitors who were cheaper versus PECO. Probably someone in energy knows why that happened, that the incumbent was cheaper than competitors.

Making it up....if PECO were 9 cents, the competitors were all 12+. All of them. I get they are resellers so again something happened during the pandemic to cause them to not be able to offer a lower price.

I've heard of the US Bank Cash+ card. 5% is hard to beat. Apparently the only drawback is you have to choose the categories every quarter.

We have the PenFed 5% gas card that is permanent and automatically deducted every statement, nothing to do. So we never need a 5% category for gas. I wonder if US Bank does Costco as a department store? I bet no, it's likely a warehouse club. That would be pretty ridiculous and a dream come true, gas, and Costco at 5%! But if I had US Bank I'd do internet and cell--that's 2 categories. And what I've come to realize is they know the spend tends to be less so they give up the 5%. I try to no longer apply for any more credit cards--my FICO took a major hit when I paid off the house (go figure). It took more than a year to bounce back, and then I took the bait--ALLY credit card $200 bonus when you spend $500, why not? Credit took another hit on the hard inquiry, and then they took ever single day allowed before paying the $200--they did it on the last day promised! Too aggravating lol

p.s. what I mean is say I got the credit card in mid January--the fine print said $200 will be deposited in your account after you meet the requirements (spend $500), and, no later than April 30. So I met the requirements in early March. They literally made the deposit April 30. Not worth the aggravation.

I've done many bank promos. Sometimes they deposit really fast (within a day or two of meeting the requirements). Other times they wait until the very last day.

Also with regards to new account bonuses, I will generally not open a new credit unless the bonus is significant. In fall of '22 opened a new chase card as it had a 90K opening bonus if you spend $3K or more in the first 90 days. That worked out well as we were having the furnace replaced.

Been a while since I looked at MD elec rates and I suspect that's a similar story as your's, but re: buying a V8 ...
We just bought a new RV and even though I'm a retired ex-auto tech who never liked diesels, I got a diesel.

My logic being that eventually gas WILL be phased out, and probably/possibly diesel, diesel will be the last to go and last to get hard to find. The 1st unexpected benefit (that I knew but really hadn't thought much about) was that the extra torque is what makes the fuel economy much better than a V8, and will just get comparatively better as fuel costs go up. While I'm 72, I should see the benefit because of the miles traveled over time

With the passthru fees I pay ~14.8 cents per KWh. That's about as cheap as you can get it here in TX. Varies a little as the passthru fees include a monthly fee + charge per KWh to the producer and then the other is the seller charge. Gotta love deregulation complete with paying 2 separate entities.

While my latest monthly bill say I got almost half my power at the lowest tier base rate of 7.5 cents/kWhr, and most of the rest at the next tier of 12.4, with only a few percent at the top rate tier of 16.6, somehow my total bill priced out to 14.74 cent/kWhr by the time various taxes, Energy-saving fees, and other adjustments all played out.

Most of those extras may not go down with my great new EV night-time base rate of under 4 cents, so my real bill may not go down all that much.

For the info. I’m at 13.416 cents for 3 mos. But the local/incumbent would be 17.692.

We shop and play the game for what you refer to as the seller charge…

Not only can we not shop for anything related to energy (we have PG&E as a monopoly in the area) but the damn power company lines keep starting massive fires and then they raise our rates to pay for the lawsuits and to "fix" issues they've been ignoring for decades.

I just dumped $20k into a new roof and another $22k into solar panels. We didn't get any battery backup in that price. I won't live long enough to break even on that deal but our utility bills keep climbing and climbing and my wife wanted solar. Yes, Dear.

would be funny if there's a "break-point understanding fee," meaning for those customers who calculated and figured out the break points, basically a surcharge for not knowing nothing, like most customers.

14.8 cents/KWh is as cheap as I could find it in TX. The producer charges 4.xx per KWh + $4.50 then you can shop for the rest. Crazy.

there is more than meets the eye, so to speak, with monthlies and distribution charges, vs. generation and transmission charges, how much does it actually cost to drive an electric car, and do people analyze it. Seems like people find looking at costs to be unpleasant.

Unless you're swimming in money, looking at costs for anything is always unpleasant because it's almost always more than expected or hoped for.

Got my first monthly bill using my shiny new smart meter so they can charge me a special low rate between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. hoping I'll move my electric vehicle charging to that time slot.

While the savings hour base rate is a mere 3.16 cents/kWhr, as claimed, that consumption is not exempt from one of the mysterious extra lines--this one labelled "fuel cost adjustment" which adds 3.14 cents more for the 83% of my consumption provided from non-renewable sources. The Renewable Energy Rider and the Transportation Electrication charges add another 0.86 cents from which my discounted period is not exempt.

So ignoring the several fees that are not proportional to usage, my true incremental usage charge for this glorious EV-related savings rate turns out to be about 7 cents/kWhr, not 3 as they advertise. My overall "real rate" including taxes and non-proportional fees gets me to just under 12 cents, which is not bad by US standards, but nothing glorious.

All the nay sayers say that with a smart meter the electric companies won't bill for peak usage BUT they are.

In Georgia where I live, at least in the metro Atlanta area, we can choose out natural gas supplier but not electric. Georgia Power seems the be the primary supplier of electricity in the metro Atlanta area for residential power. The state of Georgia is unique in that businesses with new connected loads of 900 kilowatts or greater have the option of selecting their electricity billing provider.

Interestingly, I had not thought about it. My gas meter has been the same as long as I've lived in this house (2002). But I was getting emails weekly comparing consumption week to week, broken down by day.

Genius that I am, a lightbulb turned on in my head, yep. All meters are smart--electric, gas, and water. At some point the "heads" of these devices had been replaced, as they look the same as a brand new 2023 construction and its meters. The "heads" looked the same, that is. Another clue would be the lack of oxidation on the plastic.

People think it's great to have everything connected. Ask the Delta Air CEO about that one. He claims his co lost $500 mil. as a result, during the CrowdStrike outage.

And isn't it fascinating--the electric co offered a $40/mo discount if you allowed them to cut your AC condenser during peak. The discount dwindled to $10/mo, then got eliminated. They never sent any contractors out to recover the devices. Mine got trashed when the hvac was replaced in 2020. Smart = one way benefit. Imagine years down the line when the device goes faulty and folks' AC condensers won't turn on, the homeowner is left to fix it at their own expense. Not a very good program imho and I'd never let them touch my hvac again in the future.

Last point, it's interesting when devices are on the exterior of a home, what public utilities can do. My, or rather, Verizon's FiOS interface, was 2009, and it's inside the house. That was dumb on their part as they can't get to it without the homeowner. Today, they install on the exterior so they can do as they please.

We have att fiber, installed in 2018. The only box on the outside is one that takes the fiber from the pole and couples it with a patch cord that runs into the house (ie female-female coupler). No electronics outside. Inside the fiber goes into the ONT which outputs ethernet. Most customers then connect this ethernet to the att gateway box. Devices then connect to the gateway directly or via a customer owned router behind the gateway.

In my case the gateway is not used. Authentication function of the gateway is handled in software using pfsense. This required pulling some certs off the gateway and is not really a novice process. End result is att can't spy as easily on my traffic. All dns requests go out via a vps using quic or tls encryption using a local dns server (adguard home). Browsers are set up to use ECH which further obfuscates destinations.

As for current installs, it's my understanding att no longer even installs the dmarc boxes. Rather fiber goes directly into the premise into a new gateway box that combines the ONT and gateway function into one (bgw320-500 or bgw320-505). While a bit more challenging, it is possible to eliminate this as well to entirely use customer owned equipment.

I'm in my current home two years now. This house had two meters on the back of the outside of the home. AFAIK PECO no longer does off peak service but I'm guessing that's what the 2nd meter was for. The bill would show both meters with one having very little activity but a monthly charge for both.

Last fall we had to have some major electric work done because water was getting into the breaker box. At that time we decided to go from 100 to 200 amp and get rid of the 2nd meter. We informed PECO and told them to come get their meter head. A couple weeks later they did yet they are still charging the 2nd meter monthly rental.

We have tried numerous times to get this charge removed and paid back for the time we haven't had the darn thing, to no avail. They really can do whatever they want and us peons can't really do anything about it.

My most current electric bill in Texas, I have an electric co-op, so there is no shopping around: 14.45 cents/kwh

Out of control due to government mandates and regulations. Shutting down inexpensive coal and forcing ultra expensive intermittent wind and solar on us, which stop working in the peak winter and hottest part of summer.

That is a new one on me. But I suppose I should not be surprised--they provided the meter, so I guess they own it and can charge for it.

I don't see an item on my bill for that, but maybe it is buried in the line marked "customer charge".

Yeah I just looked and it's not called a rental fee, but that's what it is. On my bill it has two lines for customer charge.

Customer charge ... $10.54
Customer Charge Meter 2 ... $2.04

While looking for the above on my bill, I noticed that PECO's billing cycle is 28 or 29 days, cutting a day or two off each month adds up over time as well. It's all the nickel and diming these companies do, that pretty much goes unnoticed by most people, is one of my pet peeves.

Another charge I just noticed, Distribution System Improvement Charge, 98 cents. All these minute charges do add up to a lot of profit for these companies.

Had to switch again. 5.9 cents expiring.

Went to 4.7 cents for 4 mos. There are 2 offers in the 4 cent range, then it goes up to 7, with PECO being 9.2.

Why the game in PA, I don't know. It's not a clean transition--we have to allow a buffer for the switch to take place--seems to get done in < 2 weeks.

But not getting it done could mean going from 5.9/kWh to 10.9 kWh or more, just like that.

We're all adults--why does our state make us play this game? Seems like my buddy if FLA is simply at the low price without doing anything.

I got a letter from the new co., and it looks like a letter is in the mail from PECO today. If it gets switched I did so within 2 weeks of expiration.

Think of this--what if rates are rapidly rising? You'd want to switch to the higher rate at the end of the period, at the latest possible date, not 2, not 4 weeks early. In this case, the new rate is lower, so 2 weeks early is fine.

Glad I live in a state that the rate stays the same and can pay equal payments all year long with a yearly review to adjust our equal payment. or you can pay on actual usage and have the actual show each month

If I followed up. I requested the switch on 9/2.

Got a letter thanks! You'll be switched by 2 cycles (um hope not).

Switch was done 9/11. That's reasonable. Because that's with 1 1/2 weeks to spare.

Now I'll have to play this game again in January.

I have been fortunate to secure below-market rates for the past few years.