Electric Bill for July

[Guest]

quote:

---

Originally posted by EightFingers

... At least if you lose all your utilities, you won't freeze to death in the winter....

---

And there is nothing like HAVING to run hot water at all times during the middle of the winter just to keep your pipes from busting.

I guess that's another reason why you have so many fireplaces in the mainland.



-------
Rally For the Plan

[MarkP]

Now you have caught me shooting my mouth off. I know this is true for commercial customers. I thought it was also true in some way for residential customers and it is the only way I can see to explain the power bill going up as a result of turning off the water heater.

My HECO power bill (Oahu) does not explicitly refer to demand. There is however a non-fuel energy charge, whatever that is. I suspect it is related to demand. I know residential demand is a serious issue because HECO will outfit your water heater with a device that lets them drop you for short periods to get them through demand peaks. 9 times out of 10 you would never know they did so because of the storage capacity in the water heater.

[EightFingers]

One other thing I forgot, you(meaning most in Hawaii) don't have to invest in whole house HVAC like I just did to the tune of $7000. Generally I have to do this about every 15 years. That, right there is about $40/month. Tack on the maintenence costs for this and you can be $50/month.
You don't have to pay for insulating your house for temps that can be 0 deg (f) in December, either. Of course, that's a one time cost but it can be north of $20,000 easy.

[kani-lehua]

quote:

---

Originally posted by MarkP

My HECO power bill (Oahu) does not explicitly refer to demand. There is however a non-fuel energy charge, whatever that is. I suspect it is related to demand. I know residential demand is a serious issue because HECO will outfit your water heater with a device that lets them drop you for short periods to get them through demand peaks. 9 times out of 10 you would never know they did so because of the storage capacity in the water heater.

---

and, you get a $3.00 credit per month towards your bill.

malia paha o lohe aku

perhaps they will hear

[gtill]

There is no discount for evening or any other times in Hawaii.(BI) They don't miss a lick.

[JWFITZ]

Just a thought,

after a few years of living on boats, and basically going without, their are things I do not want to sacrifice, and things I don't mind giving up at all.

1) I hate being cold.
2) I hate being wet.
3) I hate being hungry
4) I hate missing sleep.

That would be my benchmark of things that really mess with my life disproportionally. I would expect many of you are in the same place.

I live in a very small cabin, because:

1) I can throw firewood in the stove all night, and grow it faster than I can burn it, so I am never cold.
2) Ditto
3) I live very simply and grow food in this marvelous climate faster than I can eat it--which is good, because I must pay property tax.
4) No coqui frogs up here. . .just a few damn dogs, but when it rains they go away.

Downsizing isn't a bad idea, you know.

[Hotzcatz]

Gee, it sounds like you upsized since you started out boatsized and are now on dirt. Boats are very liberating since the yardwork is easy, fishing instead of gardening, no need to buy furniture (it's all built in) and the view from the back lanai is usually quite nice. However, most houses don't overflow their bilges and float the floorboards or try to sink.

Over the past several years folks have been asking for much smaller plans for houses. There have been several under 500 square feet. One of which was for a fellow who is a sea captain so for him the "small" house was huge. I guess it is all relative.

We are getting ready to double our photovoltaic system since we would like to buy a freezer and a couple more incubators or one much bigger incubator and our system isn't big enough to run the new loads. We have been living on four photovoltaic panels which can produce 600 watts per hour at peak production for the past eight years. That runs computers, lights, printers, KitchenAid mixer and TV but the use is watched very closely. There is occasional washing machine, vacuuming and power tool use as well as two small incubators (during the summer) but that is about the maximum our current system can run. So a lot of living on sunshine is limiting the electrical use. I should calculate what our electric bill would be if we were to be paying for the power we get from the sun.

Here's what I calculated:

600 watts per hour from the photovoltaic panels x 8 hours a day = 4800 watts = 4.8 KWH per day
4.8 KWH per day x .40 cents per KWH = $1.92 per day
$1.92 per day x 30 days per month = $57.60

So our electric bill, if we had to pay for the power we make would be $57.60 per month plus whatever other charges HELCO would add on just for providing the electrical service to us if they did. So our energy usage is quite low. It does change one's lifestyle, we would use twice as much energy if we had it.

Hmm, using those numbers it would take 6.94 years for our photovoltaic system to pay for itself although the electric bills we had been paying before we went off the grid were $125 per month. Using those numbers, it paid for itself in 3.2 years. Either way, it was installed early in 2002.

[DickWilson]

Hotzcatz; That figure looks a little low to me. Are you factoring in the cost of replacement cells at the end of their useful life cycle? The ultimate cost even amortized must impact that figure in some way. None the less getting by on that kind of energy use is impressive by any standards.[]

dick wilson

[Carey]

I think that the replacement cost would come under the "what ever costs HELCO adds" plus the savings ... We use a little more electricity than Catz (month averages range from 5.1 - 6.5 KWH per day over the last year...) July HELCO bill was almost $75 for 160 KWH (5.5 KWH per day).... a good stategy for sustainability would be to place the saving into a replacement fund... something we all hope that HELCO is doing....