We recently had some electric billing changes.  The power company did apparently warn us about the coming increases but apparently I missed it.....or wasn't paying attention.  Well, it hit this month.  My house has a mix of propane and electric so my increases are pretty low.  My friend on the same electric co-op has an all electric house and his bill spiked by $75 for the month even with lower use than the month before.  

Did a lot of research and found there are many ways electric companies are raising rates.  Some utilities are adding peak billing rates.  Some, like mine, are adding demand billing.  This is all possible with smart meters.  With peak billing, they bill at a higher per kWh rate for certain high use periods.  With demand billing, they look at your highest KW draw for the entire month and they multiply that by a set figure....for my utility that charge is $3.75.  So for my utility, if your highest KW draw for the month at any point is 10KW, your bill just jumped $37.50 even if you are using the same amount of kWh for the month.  For my friend mentioned above, it was approximately 50% rate increase.  For my house, with my lower high KW demand, my rate increase was 33%.  


If you have peak billing, you need to look at what time the peak rates are and then avoid doing anything that would spike use during peak billing times.  It appears for many places, peak use rates are between 3pm and 7 or 8pm.  

If you have demand billing, you want to try to spread out the use of your high electrical consumption appliances.  If you're cooking in the evening on your electric stove, don't use your electric dryer at the same time.  Don't shower at the same time someone is cooking to keep your water heater from coming on while the stove is on.  Wait till you are done cooking on your electric stove before you wash your dishes.  

Consider replacing certain appliances with propane if possible.  Unless your propane rates are very high, propane will be cheaper than electric for resistance appliances like conventional electric water heaters (doesn't include heat pump water heaters), electric resistance heaters and heat pump supplemental strip heat, stove/ovens, clothes dryers etc.  If you have access to natural gas, then run every appliance that can run on natural gas.

Check your bill.  Educate yourself on how it's calculated and then you may be able to take advantage of how it's billed to lower or at least keep it from raising too much. Utility bills aren't coming down so plan accordingly.  And, if you have the old school non-smart meter, keep it as long as possible!!

I can't imagine training my wife about peak demand pricing. Attached File

It feels more like end stage capitalism, like all of the greed, mistakes, fast ones and incompetence are catching up and it's destroying itself.

Like a guy who smoked 2 packs a day for 65 years asking how did I get cancer?...

Also check to see if peak rates are seasonal. Grid electricity demand by time of day changes from summer to winter.

I understand costs are rising.  I would like to know how much of the cost increases are being driven by "green energy" requirements.  Don't know the answer at the moment.  But, regardless of the cost reasons, utility prices are rising.  I planned for this when I built the house so our increases are much less than people we know and our total bill is also still much less than other people we know.  

I'm not mad at the power co-op.  They have to pass on increased costs regardless.  But, if I understand how they are billing, I can try to take advantages of "loop holes" and minimize my bill.  

Friend of mine and I are both considering solar panels on a grid tied system.  But, one thing we found is with demand billing, you will still get hit with the high KW draw which, in the case of a solar equipped house, will most likely spike after dark.  So, in that case, we would need to try to use all our high demand electric devices during daylight hours while the panels are producing.

Oregon got a 18% increase because of green initiatives... What these dumb Dems forget is that most of our power comes from HYDRO!

https://www.kgw.com/article/money/pge-electric-rate-increase-customers-jan-1-2024/283-9d0cb2de-dc0c-4668-913c-3282ca9d2ca1

https://portlandgeneral.com/news/2023-12-18-opuc-approves-customer-price-changes-to-take-effect-january-2024

It doesn't get "greener" (and usually cheaper) than hydroelectric dams!  Flood control, water storage, power generation, recreation....everything about dams is good....unless you are stupid...as many greenies are!

We are seeing more and more solar panels on houses so I wonder if the lower kWh consumption due to solar is driving a need for the power companies to find income....thus enter demand charges.  Someone with solar could get their consumption down to zero (more than consumption in daytime and pull from the grid at night) but then the demand charge hits them even though they are producing the full amount of their use.  

I think it's really important we all (if we are trying to keep monthly costs low) understand how our electrical bills are calculated and then tailor our use to minimize our costs.  

Here's one sneaky trick that the power companies hate, but can't stop you from doing!



My wife swears it's cut our electrical bill by 50% this year!

The wood was free; we had to cut some trees down because they were old, leaning WAY over the house, and one was a maple tree. We convinced the tree cutter to cut the logs into manageable sizes and I whittled them to firewood sizes.

I hate to think about buying firewood next this year.

^^YES on fireplace.

Got a brand new fireplace installed with a cap and 4 cords of wood Oct 23. Have not had a usable fireplace in 3 or 4 years.

Spend some money on a more modern stove. Buy one used. You will use half the wood in a season than that old design.

We also have a wood stove in our basement but we only use it when it gets really cold outside.  Buying firewood has gotten really expensive in my area so unless you can get free wood and don't calculate your labor, I'm not sure you would be saving money with a wood stove.  I have a lot of hardwood trees on my property and have had to clear some out anyway so I consider the wood free....although it is a lot of work.  I enjoy the work though so it's worth it to me.  

We live in a moderate climate with lots of temp extremes.  Can get very cold but never for long.  I have mentioned it before but we love our dual fuel propane furnace/heat pump.  Especially now with demand billing, we don't have the supplemental electric strips with our heat pump so that helps keep our demand spikes low.

Agree with that. We have a modern stove.  It's not catalytic but is much more efficient than the old wood burners.  Our stove has secondary burners.  What I think is especially neat about the newer stoves is they don't belch smoke like the old stoves did.  We get a bit of smoke upon light up but once it's burning, there is just a faint wisp of smoke coming out of the chimney.  Only issue with new stoves is...the wood has to have a low moisture content.  It MUST be well seasoned.  The old stoves could burn almost anything as long as you cleaned the chimney regularly.  The new stoves, if burning seasoned wood, are also safer because they don't build up nearly as much creosote as the old stoves did.

Our state wide co-op AVEC wants to raise rates about 15% in one swope.

People are fighting back to do amuch smaller raises as many cannot afford such a sharp rise.

This is what DTE did in Michigan implementing time of day pricing for electricity rates.  Must have been written by a democrat saying "More Choice, More Control". It's an obvious lie written trying to make it sound like it's a good thing.

A lot of appliances now have "delayed start" features, partly for noise but also for this situation. Load up the dishwasher and have it set to run after the rates come back down. Same with washer and dryer.

While it’s kind of BS to hide rate increases like they are, it doesn’t change the fact that prices are rising. Prices everywhere are rising so it stands to reason electric prices will go up too. I don’t have any issues with price increases. I’m sure they are necessary.  However, by becoming more aware of how they are doing it we can all keep our monthly utility prices from rising too much. Now that I am aware of how the power company is raising prices, I can do a few things to minimize its effect on me.

I think I’d prefer off peak rates instead of demand charges because I could simply not do anything electrically intensive during peak price times and could program my AC to drop the temp a couple degrees before the higher rates, then raise the AC temp for a few hrs to keep it from running, then run it back down again after the peak hours.

Demand based billing...

What this boils down to is this:  We dont have enough power.  We need more power generation facilities to meet peak demands.  This often occurs at 4-9pm in the evening, when people get home and crank AC units to cool the house, and then use the stove to make dinner, and the drier to dry a load of clothes for work tomorrow.  As a system, we have less demand for power at 03:00 in the morning.   But we are having a hard time meeting demand at peak.

Instead of building a new hydro generation dam, or a new nuclear generating station, we are building solar farms and wind mills.  Of course, these dont often work when we need them.  No matter how good they work, they DONT help meet spikes in demand.  These high demand loads are met only by Hydro, Nuclear, Gas, Coal and oil, since we can 'turn them on" whenever we need power (and not solely when the sun is shining at 11 a.m, or the wind is blowing at 03:00 a.m.

Question:  So, if we need demand based billing to 'encourage customers to wait until low-demand times (drying their clothes at midnight) so we dont need to build a new nuclear power plant, how the fuck are we going to charge a million Teslas?  Where do we get the electricity to charge those batteries?

Politicians are jumping on the 'electric vehicle" bandwagon, because its a handy sound bite, and plays well to the treehugger moron demographic. Need an example?:  New York State.  We aren't allowed to buy new diesel or gas school buses.  A traditional internal combustion engine bus is $170,000.  Nope.  can't have one.  Schools are REQUIRED to buy electric school buses (which run about $400,000).   and because an electric bus has half the range or less of a ICE bus, we're going to need far more of these expensive buses and more bus drivers.  But all that ignores the obvious:  Where do we get the electricity to charge the batteries????

An electric vehicle is merely an EXTERNAL combustion engine.    For the most part, we're burning coal and natural gas to make electricity so Monica Moron can charge her all electric Tesla.  It makes here feel good.  But its simply taken the tail pipe exhaust and moved it to the large 200 foot tall stack at the local coal fired plant...

If we need peak demand billing to manage power supply, we haven't got enough power to charge cars.  More importantly, this SHOULD serve as a bit of a canary in teh coal mine:  In future, we can expect to suffer electrical outages because of insufficiency electric generation.  I think there's likely some SHTF survival forum considerations in there.

While I agree with your general idea, nuclear, hydro, and coal are most definitely not for high demand/peaking power. You simply don't turn them on, or even change power outputs in the time durations we are talking about. Those fuel sources are for baseload power - 100%, 24/7.

Peaking units are either gas turbines or reciprocating engines, fueled with natural gas or fuel oil. Start up time in minutes, not days, and can vary power output without a huge hit in efficiency.

We need both baseload and peaking. And we are getting neither.

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire

This is survival discussions. Everyone here should be considering their own power generation. Cut your reliance on the grid, cut your need for energy delivery (propane/ng/electricity/wood), be more self reliant.

With prices these days and government tax credits it even pays for itself over time.

Even with solar panels in a grid tie system, if you have demand billing you will get hit with your highest KW draw. It will probably be at night. Even if you use zero KW (meaning make more than you use in daytime to balance out what you use at night) you will still get hit with demand charges.

I agree with you overall though. The first thing everyone building or remodeling a house should be looking at is not the fancy appliances and finishes. They should be looking at max insulation. The more the better (remember insulation improvements aren’t linear so you will have to find your particular point where more insulation doesn’t pay any more and that will vary by location)

I have 30kwh of batteries currently. I'll probably move to 60kwh eventually as that's what I need to cover most of my winter heating.  I don't sell to the grid I just charge my batteries all day and use them at night.

While I agree with you….I do know of a dam that is used for peak power production. When they need more power, flow from the dam increases to spin the turbines. Not sure how common that is though. Most dams are definitely base load suppliers.

I do know of a large coal plant that can ramp up and down output somewhat. I don’t know how much. At max power, it burns an entire trainload of coal in 12 days. But it never stops producing power so still a base load supplier.

Solar works great in some places….but not well in other areas. OK is a pretty good spot for solar. Many other areas are not nearly so good.

It's certainly more expensive up North. It's still doable most places just requires more panels and batteries. High installation angles also help with snow issues.

Definitely keep a generator as batteries are still too expensive to run for very many days with minimal sun. But you can use a much smaller generator in hybrid with your batteries to keep your home powered and minimize fuel use.

Long term no one can store enough fuel to run for months on end off of generators. Sunlight comes back regularly and can supply your needs for years. Most home generators aren't designed to run for months on end and require a lot of regular maintenance. Solar systems are generally designed to run every day for years.

I will say, there are a lot of unscrupulous installers. My current whole home system with batteries was about $22k (before the 30% tax credit). My brother has a similar sized system with no batteries and got talked out of $70k for it. I'll probably increase the size of my system, primarily for increased cloudy winter performance. My current system will put off about 130% of my summer needs and 95% of my winter needs (including all electric heating). By upsizing to ~130% of my daily winter needs I'll reduce the amout of batteries I need.

If you can afford it, add batteries to supply your after dark needs.  Also handy for power outages.

I can’t store power cheaper than the grid can supply it to me. I have zero desire to be off grid. A solar panel install, if I go that route, will just be a pre retirement install so I can go into retirement with as low utility bills as possible.

There is no way to get living costs to zero…with out living like the homeless…and even the homeless have living costs. But, if you know how your bills are being calculated, you can often reduce them.

In my case, these new demand charges are minimal since I have propane to handle large heating type needs (cooking, water heating, furnace for winter heat etc). Propane, for me, is much cheaper to run those utility needs on than electrical resistance heating. My friend I mentioned, he and I have talked about his options. We are remodeling his basement and will be installing propane lines for an on demand water heater and switching the stove/oven to propane. May do the dryer later.  If we can cut his demand charges in half, it will easily pay for the yearly propane cost. Eventually, he will switch his heat pump to a dual fuel propane/heat pump system. The issue with demand billing is to get your usage spikes down as low as possible.

I just checked the power bill.  No demand billing.  I guess having coal-fired power plants a short hop from the coal mines is efficient.

@FrankSymptoms
If you want some free firewood (not cut to size) call your local road commission. They're more than happy to tell you where they're cutting. Might even talk the crew into cutting it into manageable sizes.
Friend of mine got all his firewood by doing that.

Thanks for the idea!