Re: electric rate & fees survey

On Fri, 7 Dec 2007 16:44:48 +0000 (UTC), enigma <enigma@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Neon John <no@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:qaqil3lfk61fhdi6k500db8a5ill4tansu@xxxxxxx:

Holy mother of Uncle Tungsten!!!!! Daaaaammmmnnn. Where
do you live? I wanna avoid that place.

New Hampshire. take a look at my propane under that survey...
& my heating oil was $3.249 on Wednesday.
can you see why i keep saying i'll save money if i move?

I think that I'd be loading the moving van tonight!

So what's the deal on energy costs up there? What makes all the common forms of
energy so expensive?

as it is, i'm baffled by trying to cut electric usage. i have
actually cut consumption by changing over to CF bulbs, but i
really hate them, the light is very 'cold' & they take a while
to come up to full brightness in a house kept at 65ish.
i can't cut the heat lamps, or water trough heaters (the
electric fence is off while we're building the barn, but we
aren't telling the goats that), so i don't think i can get it
down much more. i wonder if solar electric fence would help
any. no energy credits for that & a large upfront cost.

Given your livestock energy requirements, I don't see how you can do a lot more,
given your current usage. Whatever you do undoubtedly would be far into the area of
diminishing returns since the marginal cost of the next kWh is low. The problem even
now is that fees are half your bill. The only solution to that seems to be to move.

Are the various fees fixed or are they proportional to usage? And how close are your
neighbors and are you on good terms with them? If the fees are fixed and if you're
close enough, you might be able to feed multiple dwellings from one meter and
sub-meter each dwelling. That way you'd have only one set of fees. That might not
be kosher with the power company but what they don't know won't hurt 'em.

Does an electric fence really use much power? I can't imagine much, but then again,
I've never metered one.

Were I in your shoes, I'd probably do a detailed energy audit, measuring every single
energy consumer in your house. I'd look at alternatives and their costs. For
instance, if you have central heat, would you be better off with a propane unvented
heater in each room and only run them when the room is occupied?

I'm doing that now, only with electricity. Most of the time when I'm home, I'm in
one spot. A radiant electric heater is aimed at my feet because they need extra heat
(Reynaud's syndrome). It keeps the rest of me adequately warm and lets me drop the
room temperature into the low 60s and still remain comfortable.

Something else I did in my previous building in Cleveland. Uninsulated block
building with a flat roof meant impossible to heat and cool. In my bedroom I erected
a "comfort bubble" around my bed. Basically floor to ceiling drapes encircling my
bed. In the winter a small ceramic heater kept it warm. In summer, a portable AC of
the type with the hose that gets stuck out a window kept it cold. I used a similar
technique but without the curtain in my den. Radiant heat in the winter and another
portable AC in the summer. Those two things knocked literally a couple hundred
dollars off my electric bill.

Is wood heat an option there? How about other alternatives such as waste oil? I
recently helped a friend install a waste oil furnace in his garage. Used motor oil
is available free for the asking around here so his heating bill dropped to
essentially zero, involving only the electricity necessary for the blower and burner.

I'm taking a good hard look at leaves as a heat source. I live in an all-hardwood
forest and the amount of leaves produced every year is enormous. I need to do some
calculating and measuring, particularly calorimetery and some product flow
engineering but I suspect that they'll be viable. Vacuum 'em up, air-dry 'em, grind
'em into a coarse powder and feed them to a stoker type burner.
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Better to pass boldly into that other world in the full glory of some passion
than fade and wither dismally with age. -Joyce

.

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