Life hack: solar panels. 2 panels for 250€ literally cut our electricity consumption from the grid in half. Bought them in April and they almost paid for themselves by now.
Meanwhile in actual 1st countries with good green electricity generation infrastructure, good electricity suppliers and a better system for landlords (mostly a few big companies who actually compete for tenant satisfaction):
I moved into an all electric house over 10 years ago and it was awful back then with it being avg $500 a month. This past year ive been paying $1100 a month. I do not have a huge place and outside of a few pcs and tvs i really dont use much so it pisses me off. To broke to change or put solar up. We just decided to move so ill be thrilled when this shitshow is not my problem anymore.
How are you spending more in a month than I do in a year? Also fully electric, had the gas disconnected before I moved in. Is your rate like $5/kWh or something?
Rate here is around £0.24/kWh, spending £89/month currently. It would probably be less if I didn’t like long warm showers. My house isn’t even new either, it was built before WW2.
Are you running a fusion reactor?
If this is seroiously your current situation, the “cant afford solar” part does not make sense. If you pay 1100$ a month for electricity, buying a solar panel for roughly 100$ should be easy. It will probably pay for itself after a month or two
If his winter heating need is that large he may live in an area where solar does not produce that much electricity during winter. I myself live in an area that has 0 (yes zero) sunlight for one winter month because of the polar night and just 1-4 hours of very low intensity sunlight for the rest of the 5 month long winter. In summer when we have midnight sun, literally 24 hour sunlight, the electricity is almost free so whatever the solar panel produces then is near useless. Also you simply don’t use that much in that season. For me at least it’s not really a worthwhile investment.
If it was 1100$ on average this year, I dont think thats 2200$ in winter and 0$ during summer. Even if its 300 during summer those solar panels pay for themselves after a few months
How much is your electricity?? $1 a Kwh??
Its a payment plan since i cant afford the winter months peak when I have to use electric heating. Its also an older house and needs some real improvements to insulation and new windows. I also wish i could upgrade the electric heating since i do believe even that have better options as well. All things I could never get to sadly, but now that were selling I will be really happy not having to think about all of that ever again. Ive been keeping track and in summer it’s actually $300. Winter is brutal sadly.
Sorry to say it like this but is there any way you can cut back? Getting a heat pump can help but you can also turn things off, use less heat, etc. I am wondering if there might be something wrong $1000 a month sounds wrong. Do you have family?
Ha. I lived in Ontario back when they had a Provincial Hydro company, the bill was fine. For some reason the government sold it to a private company and that company bought the “debt” that the Ontario Hydro had. The private company added a debt retirement fee to our bills. Which was a huge portion of our bill.
To me if you are a private company and you buy a failing business you’d roll fees into the electrical rate to gather money from those using it the most, not just a fee onto anybody, even the smallest user.
Our Water bill was just as stupid, you got charged for amount used, then a sewer reprocessing fee on the same amount. So double billing. I argued if I water my grass or fill a pool then that water doesn’t reach the sewer for reprocessing.
Those two bills were the final straws in me deciding to move to BC. I was already considering the move and weighing options, but saving about $200 a month on utilities was a tipping factor.
Here you can get a second meter installed for irrigation so you don’t have to pay for the sewage portion.
Nice
It might be worth calling your water department about of it’s still an issue. I didn’t know it was a thing until a neighbor told me. Not that I water my lawn (it’s mostly drought resistant local flora)
Hell I only water my 6 or so raised beds all summer long and I had the water dept come out and effluent meter on my outlet because that’s bs
Didn’t you know the local data centers need that water? Don’t be selfish. (/s)
Or burn data centers
I did go back to burning wood. Per watt of heat it’s roughly ⅓ of the price where I live and with the specific set up I have. However the largest drawback of wood is that it entails a lot of manual work. First I have to spend a dozen hours carrying wood into the basement during autumn. Then during winter I have to go down 2-3 times a day to feed the furnace. However to me it’s worth it. It’s a comfy ritual that saves 5-20 euros every single day during winter depending on what the electricity price is that day.
Firewood warms you three times!
- When you cut/split it
- When you move it
- When you burn it.
It’s very efficient that way
If you set yourself on fire, it can keep you warm for the rest of your life.
I’ve been told not to set myself on fire to keep others warm, but if it’s just for me that should be okay?
- When it emits CO2! 😂 😥
CO1 is the real danger
Unlike all of the other heating sources we have! Damn EPA making sure new stoves are 95% efficient and not holding oil burners to such a high standard!
You realize it was a joke, right? I mean, the crying-laughing emoji was intended to indicate that subtle humor was in play.
If you actually understand that abstract, would you mind parsing it down to highschool graduate with scientific interests level for us?
It’s evaluating the heating properties of propane and showing the results of an ai model they put to work to evaluate the efficacy of propane primarily in heat pumps. The outcome was that the lubricants in oil tends clogs in propane heated oil based heat pumps that lack an oil separation unit and that work needs to be done to prevent that from happening in systems where refrigerants and oil are mixed/used in the same system.
The main reason i posted it was because it’s hard to find anything defending propane as efficient and a next generation refrigerant. It’s also hard to find any data that’s not google ai or an msds by some company. I also wanted to just point out the GWP of propane which is like 3. Though I just googled that and it says the updated data based on European data, it’s 0.02 over 100 years which is next to nothing compared to natural gas and wood burning.
