Lost my faith in the free market economy the other day!

[JonnyB]

Three thousand KWH? Holy Crap!

I have an 1800 ft^2 ramble with ~1000 ft^2 finished in the basement. In central Minnesota, in mid-winter, we use about 650KWH. Heat and kitchen stove are natural gas.

jb

[CAnnoneer]

3000 kwh/month is 100 kwh/day is 4kwh per hour or 4kw power on average. That's the equivalent of running half a dozen major appliances continuously. You might want to invest in thermal isolation and some form of non-electric heating, e.g. a solid or liquid fuel stove or central heating with a gas boiler.

[cordex]

Even with 3,067 kwh/month, the Ameren rate calculator shows that your bill shouldn't be over $288.04 for February.  Did you forget to pay your previous month's bill?  Adding your former average bill of $110 to $288 brings it pretty close to what you owed for February.

Have you double-checked your bill to see where the charges are coming from?

[roo_ster]

My power company does not charge a fixed rate.  The rate is a function of usage per minute.  Things like an AC unit turning on can cause a momentary spike that gets translated intot he higher rate for an entire minute.

Such pricing arrangements can play havoc with rate calculators.

[glockfan.45]

We have electric heat, and an electric water heater also it has been a cold month so the 3k kwh isnt unreasonable. I am heating a roughly two thousand square foot home. As said before I rent so changing my furnace isnt an option. Trust me folks I went over the bill again and agian when I opened it, the charges are right no carry over from last month was applied. Its price gouging and some folks I have spoken to have had bills even higher despite having lower usuage on their bills. Ameren is screwing with us plain and simple. People here are foaming at the mouth over this. If Ameren raised their rates a little to match inflation/increase cost in energy I would have understood and been fine with it. Anybody in a different area care to tell us what your rate per kwh is? I would like to compare it to see what rate folks around the country are paying compared to what us here in Illinois are dealing with.

[Matthew Carberry]

The comparison wouldn't really matter.  As you know, the cost of elec. is totally dependent on the power source of the generating site.

My electric, for example, is mostly from natural gas plants and nat. gas costs have skyrocketed locally.  The folks near the dams are on a whole other metric.  Ditto the coal-fired.  You might look at what similar generation types are charging.