Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Too good to be true

Did I mention that we got solar energy on the house? Oh, you heard that already. Well, did I mention the $2.18 electric bill? Oh, you got that part too.

Today came the reality check, or reality letter as the case may be. JCP&L sent us a letter telling us that they had made a mistake on our bill due to the transfer to the new meter. Our bill actually comes to about $75 for the month instead of $2.18.

This is not really a surprise to us; we've been watching the meter pretty closely for the last few weeks and it sure seemed like we had net usage in excess of $2. It was darned hot that month too, and we had the air conditioning on a whole bunch of days. When something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

It's still a big decrease; last year our summer electric bills were about $225. We still saved a great deal of money because of the solar and have been really happy with it. Now, I have a goal to get our usage down even lower to come as close to the break-even mark as possible.

Oh well. It was good while it lasted.

5 comments:

DBK said...

$75? I would love to get it down to $75. Our bill ran around where yours ran last summer and we just had all of the windows replaced with much better windows. We figure we're saving a lot because the price went up per kW but we'd still love to bring it down. If we knocked another $150 a month off the bill, that would be fantastic.

JoanneMarie Faust said...

My boyfriend was just talking about going solar last night. I live in a development with a homeowner's association, so we'd probably have to hold someone's puppy hostage to get permission from the imbeciles in charge, but we definitely want to look into it.

Andrew said...

Piksea, go for it. A co-worker of mine just got approved by the state. They got approval from their homeowner's association also. HOAs have also lost in litigation aimed at blocking or removing solar panels from homes. If they fight it and win, it'll be time to write our legislators. Arizona passes a law preventing HOAs from doing this. Maybe we'll need one here.

Janet said...

Isn't it amazing how quickly we'd be on the phone if the error had been in the opposite direction?:)

PapaGoose said...

"Solar power. When will people learn?"

-The Simpsons "Marge vs. the Monorail"