Christmas was hell on my electric bill!!!

[asheets]

Just got my City of Loveland electric bill today -- 808 KwH for December!!! -- 35% higher than normal.  Geez...

Tracked it down to two things -- one obvious, one not...

1. Christmas lights -- my battery bank is offline at the moment, or else I would have run them with my gen and PVs.  Plus we went with traditional "big bulbs" for the outside trees this year, along with the old-style mini-bulbs we've had for years instead of switching to LEDs for the indoors.
   
2. Ran into a problem with my CNG furnace this month.  Now, you're probably asking, how can this drive up my electricity consumption?  Here's how:
   
   

     a) The main blower was wired incorrectly, and apparently had been for sometime.  The medium-speed AC winding finally quit running, but was still drawing tons of electricity when the furnace attempted to start it.  Switched it over the the high-speed heater winding, and all is good again.  I will have to watch the motor for the rest of the season, though, as the run capacitor and start windings are probably going to die -- and I'll have to replace the motor in the spring (new gen project?).

     b) The ignition system would light the gas and heat up the combustion chamber.  The control board was programmed to fire off the blower within 180 seconds; however, since the blower wasn't running, the combustion chamber would overheat and kill the flames.  But, because we have decent natural flow in the house (plus a mini exhaust motor), the chamber would cool down in 3 minutes and call for the ignitor to fire again.  Basically, the igniter would fire every three minutes until the house eventually warmed up -- probably didn't use up any more CNG than normal but lots of electricity (plus probably took several years of life off the igniter).

Just when I thought I could afford Christmas presents for the family this year... (not to mention that, because of all the snow and ice, I have to pay for a gas tank repair on my wife's car).  Damn.

[hiker]

are they rasing the price of natrual gas there as well..its going up 30percent here.

my elect bill is around 120 a month here..sure that will go up when they raise the price of gas--they power the turbines with natrual gas...had a great christmas here

and a happy new year..hope you all had the same..................  :}

[Norm]

 Well according to the literature 100 LEDs use

about 2 watts I bought 50 of them put them up

...got 120 more but never got around to putting them up....

  Glowing 50 LEDs for a total of 45 watt hrs.

cost under 2 cents

......watching the neighbors

brightly lit trees...deer....$100-$200 inflated

Santa Clauses and Snowmen...

  priceless !

      ( :>) Norm.

 

[zap]

Back in September or thereabouts Xcel Energy proclaimed our gas bills would be going down, I can't remember the touted percentage.  A few months later they were petitioning for a rate hike for electricity and then not long after came the inevitable, gas rates going up also.

It always manages to ratchet up, luckily I manage to do the same with my prices to others. Hmmmmm... classic 'spiral' anyone?

[asheets]

My CNG usage and bill have been going down of late.  I havent looked at the cost per unit recently, but I did get rid of my CNG vehicle last year because (1) the cost per unit doubled on CNG overnight, (2) the rumor was that we were importing the stuff from Venuzuela instead of using local stuff, and (3) gasoline was cheaper by about a 3rd.  Xcel, in fact, has discontiued their CNG vehicle pump services in my area because of the absolute lack of demand (because of the outrageous price, I assume).

[asheets]

Fortunately for me, my electricity (City of Loveland) and my CNG (Xcel Energy) are coming from 2 seperate utilities.  CoL has a pretty neat arrangement with the windfarm on the northern border so that the wind power surcharge has gone down 2x in the last year -- rumor has it that the surcharge may even go away sometime in 07.