BGE bill seems outrageous - anybody else? (heat pump, money)

[coolnana5]

i'm in a small townhouse..Been between $300-$400 month for 3 months now..and going up again in june..

Originally Posted by myselfdotcom

My this month bill is $196 ( Gas and Electric - Budget Billing) but my actual usage is around $130s range. On this month statement, it stated my next month budget billing will be $110.

I don't know how warm or how much electricity you guys used....there is so outrageous number...$500 for a townhome...wtf are you running a weed shop under your basement?

Also for those who are living in the rental complex...they are normally tagged on additional fee ...some stupid crap into the total bill too..

[jnavarro1003]

I live in Westminster and have a 6yr old 2600sqft home with gas furnace, hot water heater. We have always had high BGE bills in the $400-500 range in the winter. We had a sunroom added 2 years ago and this year is really the first year we used the electric heater for that room. To my horror, our bill was $700 last month. We turned off all major appliances and turned each one on one by one while watching the meter and found that the sunroom heater caused our meter to spin out of control. I never knew or cared to read a bill or a meter for that matter until last month. I did a lot of reading online and found that the average American household consumes about 1000kwh in a month. Last month we used 3460kwh and paid thru the nose for it. This month my bill was $510 and we used 1500kwh. I still don't believe this is correct, unless there is a hole in my roof. I complained to BGE, they sent me a form letter. The same form letter some of my neighbors and friends have recieved after complaining to BGE. I did file a complaint with the public service commission. It will take a few months or more for someone to come out though. I have no other choice but to use BGE, I am just out of range for Alleganey power and pepco. Something has to give, we are all being ripped off. If you're using that many kwh you have a problem. A home energy audit would have costed me $400 to have someone come out and figure out the problem. We found it for free...kind of. Good luck.

[frankie14]

I am in Catonsville, SFH, and my electric usage has almost doubled in Dec. and Jan. Not just when compared to last year, but when compared to the last 15 years. Weather has nothing to do with it as I heat with gas. My current electric usage is similar to my July and Aug. numbers when the central a/c is on 24/7.

[ReefAreCoolToo]

seriously, post your bge bill with usage on here...without disclosed your personal info....i really want to see..
Here is mine. I live in Baltimore County

[trying2moveup]

Originally Posted by myselfdotcom

seriously, post your bge bill with usage on here...without disclosed your personal info....i really want to see..
Here is mine. I live in Baltimore County

how do you heat your house - because your electric is identical to mine, but we have gas heat and cooking and I'm spending about $170 on the right side of the bill, with about $70 of that in gas delivery charges.

your distribution charges are also a LOT less than here in Laurel - we are paying around 1.08 per therm for gas and around there, maybe slightly less - I don't have the bill in front of me - per kwH for electric.

The other thing that kills me with these BGE bills is that we could ALL be saving $20.50 if they would kill that stupid "customer charge" for electric (7.50) and gas (13.00). That is nothing but PURE PROFIT for BGE!

[ReefAreCoolToo]

Originally Posted by trying2moveup

how do you heat your house - because your electric is identical to mine, but we have gas heat and cooking and I'm spending about $170 on the right side of the bill, with about $70 of that in gas delivery charges.

your distribution charges are also a LOT less than here in Laurel - we are paying around 1.08 per therm for gas and around there, maybe slightly less - I don't have the bill in front of me - per kwH for electric.

The other thing that kills me with these BGE bills is that we could ALL be saving $20.50 if they would kill that stupid "customer charge" for electric (7.50) and gas (13.00). That is nothing but PURE PROFIT for BGE!

Heating = gas, cooking=on gas. We cook a lot at home. We live in a rowhome/townhome middle section, so both side of my walls are occupied by someone else. Myabe that play a factor too?

[trying2moveup]

Originally Posted by myselfdotcom

Heating = gas, cooking=on gas. We cook a lot at home. We live in a rowhome/townhome middle section, so both side of my walls are occupied by someone else. Myabe that play a factor too?

That would make sense as you are "insulated" on both sides - great for you.

I got my last bill out for mid-Jan to mid-Feb. This is for approx 2500 sq. ft. SFH, with dual zone HVAC. We used 164 units at a therm factor of 1.113 (which is slightly higher than yours) for a total of 183 therms used.

Our distribution charge is .2585 which is slightly higher than yours, as is our gas commodity for 89 therms at 1.08... and 94 therms at .897.

Obviously, we use a lot more therms than you (vs. 25 therms). I'm curious what do you keep your heat set on during the day and night. You may also have a very efficient hvac unit.

I also noticed that our electric delivery service is slightly lower than yours. I don't know why but I would think it would be higher, as on the gas end.

Anyway, enjoy the fact that you have a low bill!!

[ReefAreCoolToo]

Originally Posted by trying2moveup

That would make sense as you are "insulated" on both sides - great for you.

I got my last bill out for mid-Jan to mid-Feb. This is for approx 2500 sq. ft. SFH, with dual zone HVAC. We used 164 units at a therm factor of 1.113 (which is slightly higher than yours) for a total of 183 therms used.

Our distribution charge is .2585 which is slightly higher than yours, as is our gas commodity for 89 therms at 1.08... and 94 therms at .897.

Obviously, we use a lot more therms than you (vs. 25 therms). I'm curious what do you keep your heat set on during the day and night. You may also have a very efficient hvac unit.

I also noticed that our electric delivery service is slightly lower than yours. I don't know why but I would think it would be higher, as on the gas end.

Anyway, enjoy the fact that you have a low bill!!

My thermostat is set to turn on at 6am-8am to 70F and 6pm-8pm 70F then the rest is set to 62F. It was the recommended CPA setting from the digital thermostat.
I have an old HVAC unit

My wife and kid stays at home during the day may be the reason why my electricity is higher than you.

[trying2moveup]

You are fortunate. Your sq. ft. must also be less.

Our electricity is about the same as yours, and i'm home with the kids all day too. We just use as much natural light as we can, and everything has a CFL bulb in it.

I keep saying, "this must be that. . .and this must be this way. . ." because if these variables are NOT those particular ways, that only tells me that BGE is fixing the prices all over their service area and robbing some people blind, which is completely infuriating!!

[ngreer2]

Our house is about 2400 sq ft. February's bill (for January) was the most outrageous: $481.73!! This month's bill was better, $300.27 but that was for a 27 day billing cycle.

I have been very frustrated by our large BGE bills and have started to read our meter every day, started a spreadsheet to track the monthly bills, started measuring how many kwH we're using with each appliance/device, etc.

We are currently part of the Time of Use program which is the incentive program that has been around for a number of years and will automatically be converted to the Peak Rewards program soon. We do our laundry, run our dishwasher, and I do most of our cooking ahead of time only during the off peak hours (I make meals for the week on the weekend). We have a programmable thermostat. I hang clothes to air dry whenever possible. According to our last bill, over 60% of our use is during off peak hours.

Anyway, I am starting to suspect that something is not quite right with the meter during the weekends which I need to explore more. HOWEVER, I have discovered that I paid $11.02 more on our last bill than we would have if we were on the standard flat rate rather than time of use plan!!! We paid $6.52 more for our energy use and $4.50 more for the customer charge (the customer charge for TOU customers is $12 vs. $7.50 for households on the standard plan.) Looking at my spreadsheet, we spent $15.69 more on our previous bill!

I am extremely angry over this. I keep our house at 55-57 degrees during the day (I work from home, so I am very aware of the cold and bundle myself in layers), and we keep it at 50 degrees at night. We bump it up to 60 degrees for the first two hours of the morning so it’s easier on morning dressing. I often quip that we "pay a lot to be this miserable".

Part of the reason we work so hard to use less energy and to use most off-peak is because it is better for the environment (that was our main motivation when we first started). Another strong motivation is our relatively low income compared to the average American/Marylander and having looming college expenses .

So, I am doing everything I can possibly think of to reduce our energy bill and carbon footprint (meanwhile helping BGE spread the demand) and then find out that I’m actually paying MORE!!

I don't think these companies believe that most people will do the work necessary to investigate what the numbers represent (I certainly didn't have enough time to fully look into this before but a decrease in my business due to the economy has freed up some of my time to be more diligent). So they can confuse us into paying more money when we think we're doing the right thing (i.e. time of use). One thing we need is a transparent smart grid to see the actual cost of running each of our devices and see how much we're racking up each day before we receive our final bill.

The long and short of it is - we need to make sure that the Peak Rewards is all it’s cracked up to be. We may sign up in the beginning but we will monitor the bills closely to make sure they don’t "bait and switch" us like they did with the Time of Use. I feel used and manipulated.

Nancy

A normally mild-mannered conservative person who is starting to feel like a wild-eyed radical individual fighting the nasty corporation. Give me a smart grid! Even better, I’d like to get off the grid!!