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Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,550 posts, read 81,103,317 times
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On the contrary, our bill is electricity and natural gas combined, and our most recent, (without heating and minimal AC) was the lowest in about 3 years, at $125 (3 people, 3,000 sf house). In the coldest months of winter it's over $300, but that's mostly natural gas.
ERCOT wants us to use way less during peak time of day. They have fired up old iffy coal fired plants to supplement.
Were I not too old to see any savings, there would be solar on the roof and a wall of storage in the garage.
Years ago when we had wood shingle roofs, we had little wind driven whirly bird things on the roof for removing heat from the attic . Wish someone could enable those things to make electricity.
I can find no indication that “old iffy coal plants” are restarted as a supplement to the Texas Grid during this heat wave. There was that speculation in 2020 & Bitcoin miners have purchased a couple of old coal plants for their mining. Those roof wind turbines used to vent heat out if attics are widely used, I have 2 myself along with the new Ridge Vents used by most roofers today. Some roofers are too lazy to install them.
As for what ERCOT is doing in case of a supplement right now - they are keeping “Peaker Plants” on constant standby & have increased them by 15%. This is expensive, but was decoded by the Legislature in Emergency meetings after the 2021 Freeze and Hysterical Meltdown. These standby Peaker Plants account for about half of our higher electric costs right now.
For those that don’t know - a Peaker Plant uses a massive Turbine (think Jet engine) to bring the load up on a plant instantly- as opposed to taking hours. When it comes to Power Grinds and many Generation Plants (well over 1,000 in Texas) - seconds count more than minutes, and hours can cause disasters.
Pray for the Wind to blow - 20% of Texas power is Wind, it produced between 7-8% yesterday.
Electric costs are skyrocketing because of the Green New Deal. How much has yours gone up so far? Ours is up about 20%.
Why is it "because of the green new deal"?
And for what it's worth, I just did an energy assessment TODAY. My bill has gone up just over 10% over the past five years. Certainly below the average rate of inflation.
But if others are seeing their bill go up, what is your evidence that the Green New Deal (which was never passed) has anything to with it?
The country is waiting for the Texas grid to collapse again this summer due to one of the hottest summers on record. I'm sure they'll have more non-existent blame for themselves as usual. Extreme weather events and warming climate equal more grid problems.
This is why we need as much investment as possible, (public/private partnership), on the development and installation of battery storage technologies so we have a RESILIENT POWER GRID.
Batteries are horrible for the environment. They use lithium, & lithium mining is an environmental train wreck:
Lithium mining is terrible for sub-terranian water aquafers
Batteries also use lead, which is hazardous material that had to be removed from gasoline & paint, & recycing lead batteries releases toxins into the air & water:
My bill is about the same as its been, but the city just north of me (Democatic), Ive seen people on Facebook screaming about their bills up hundreds of dollars. I dont know how people can afford that kind of increase.
It does not support your claims of cancelled permits, denied permits, and EOs being responsible. It's also from March 9th - 4 months ago.
It claims that the US Oil industry needs to be persuaded by President Biden to pump and refine more oil. The prices are sky-high, but the market needs a cheerleader president to cajole the industry players into making more product and thereby more revenue and more profit?
There's also a dubious claim about the cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline causing the stopping of more pipelines being constructed.
The issue isn't with pipelines, it's with US oil fields being shut down due to the oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia back in 2020, it's with the US oil refineries being shut down when COVID shutdowns in 2020 when demand for gasoline cratered. The US oil industry doesn't want to spend money to open its dormant domestic oil fields, only to have another price war make them unprofitable again. The US oil industry can't ramp back up because they can't find workers willing to go back to the fields and the refineries.
It’s hard to say just yet as they are doing this in summer when bills are higher anyway. We have a co-op that buys power from a bulk supplier and they are going to have to raise rates. It’s still in the works, though.
Last week our utility company announced that utility prices were going to increase on average of 47% because of an increase in fossil fuel prices. I just received my utility bill this morning. It's about three times what it was last year at this time of the year.
Electric costs are skyrocketing because of the Green New Deal. How much has yours gone up so far? Ours is up about 20%.
...because of the Green New Deal proposal that hasn't gone anywhere(voted down 57-0 in Senate)?
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