Carl Hutzler's Blog

We got a new heat pump in November and it was one of these ultra efficient new systems (R-410 type). I was surprised this month to see a bill seemingly exceed any bill I had ever paid for electricity before (we have an all electric house). So I went back 9 years and plotted out our usage as well as the per kWh costs. I found that we were using about as much as we had over the last 3 years or so…and given that this winter has certainly been cold or maybe colder than recent winters, I guess things are looking good. And we certainly have a lot more always on electronic stuff in the house these days than in the old days. Maybe we should unplug some stuff and be a little greener? We do have CFL bulbs in 90% of the house, new windows in most of the house, and I did the weather stripping this year. But jeez, that is a lot of kWh.

The below graph is a plot of usage (kWh) by month in blue with a 2 month moving average trend line (scale in kWh on left axis) compared to the cost per kWh in red with a linear trend line (scale on righ axis in $). Wow has the cost of a kWh gone up a lot! 250% in 8 years which is like 15% a year. How about that for deregulation inflation. (click image for larger)