Home Electricity Power Options?

[RollAHardSix]

The power company is charging my girlfriend $900 - $1200 in fees every month. She's on fifteen acres with animals so moving is a ...bigger conversation w where we are in our lives. We live in seperate houses roughly 20 miles apart (I'm suburban, she's rural up a mountain) but both use the same power company, a regulated company, so afai can tell these are all legal charges. 225 dollars in usage, and almost 200 dollars in transmission and another 200 dollars in distribution fees every month or more!

We can do an energy audit but what options do we have to reduce her dependency on the power company?

[codingdave]

Small-scale solar?

When we lived on a small homestead with animals, we burned some power taking care of the animals, but were able to do so off-grid by buying a small portable solar setup. You'll spend a few hundred to be up and running, but diminish how much you need to pull from the power company.

Of course, that only makes sense if all the fees scale down with usage. If those transmission and distribution fees are not usage-based, it might not save much.

[RollAHardSix]

Thats a good point, its actually not listed & I'll need to make sure they are usage. I believe they are from the amounts. We are looking at a grid tie-in solar system to avoid the upfront cost of batteries but we aren't committed either way.

[solardev]

What is she using so much power for? If she ranching or doing some sort of energy intensive processing? Heating other buildings?

Does your jurisdiction have time of use billing? What are your local laws about solar buy back?

With that much acreage and usage, a solar setup might pay itself back pretty quickly. You can consider either just doing a standard grid tie setup where you sell power back to the grid, or use batteries to timeshift your generation and usage curves, or maybe even put parts of the operation off-grid altogether (with battery and generator backup). If she has a river or stream nearby, microhydro might be a possibility too.

You can get a processional energy audit done, or if you're the DIY type, sometimes you can loan the tools (solar measurement tools, thermal cameras, energy meters, etc.) from your utility or some local energy nonprofit and learn to use them from YouTube.

If you can describe her situation in more detail, I'd be happy to discuss some options. Not an expert, but went to school for this stuff and worked in renewables for a while.

[RollAHardSix]

Thanks. We're going to do an energy audit, at-least cutting off breakers and observing the meter to start with.

Her bill listed 222.84 in generation services. 188.86 in fuel factor at 0.0413900 per kWh. 176.04 transmission services 101.02 distribution services

She does have a barn w a light for her horse but thats listed seperately for her bill. Her kWH usage is 4562 per month & I'm really not sure how she gets to that, she literally drives between 1 & 2 hours to work and back every day depending on location so she's only home in the evenings.

[toast0]

Is this all under one meter, or does she have multiple meters?

You need to figure out how much is usage based, and how much is fixed fees. If she has multiple meters and some of the fees are per meter, it may be worth considering rearranging so there's fewer meters, although that may not be the best for future use.

My house on 9 acres has 3 meters. One for the house, one for the well, and one for an outbuilding that was built before the house and used to be a woodshop. This arrangement would be handy if we subdivided and shared the well, or rented the shop to someone. Otoh, it's not very handy because the house is on a automatic generator and when utility power goes out, we have no water.

[RollAHardSix]

One meter. She has a barn with putside light on a seperate meter but those charges were seperated on the bill.

Her January bill listed 222.84 in generation services. 188.86 in fuel factor at 0.0413900 per kWh. 176.04 transmission services 101.02 distribution services

Some taxes etc and a final charge of 1359.78. I'm remembering now that they did overcharge her & we talked about that w the power company getting a credit for the next bill. My mistake on that. But for the last several months her bill has consistently been extremely high, 900 this past month, 1100 a prior month.

Her kWH usage is 4562 per month & I'm really not sure how she gets to that, she literally drives between 1 & 2 hours to work and back every day depending on location so she's only home in the evenings.

[dilidili9]

If she uses a lot of hot water, consider solar water heaters or on-demand (tankless) water heaters, which can be more efficient than traditional models.

[bruce511]

Um, your math is off a bit. 225 + 200 + 200 is 625 not 900 to 1200.

The first step is in determining the variable costs and the fixed costs. You can reduce the variable costs with self-generation, (solar, wind, hydro) fixed costs are likely fixed.

So start with accurate costing and totals.

[RollAHardSix]

Thanks. Yeah I was drawing up off memory & an old screenshot from January.

Her bill listed 222.84 in generation services. 188.86 in fuel factor at 0.0413900 per kWh. 176.04 transmission services 101.02 distribution services

Some taxes etc and a final charge of 1359.78. I'm remembering now that they did overcharge her & we talked about that w the power company getting a credit for the next bill. My mistake on that. But yeah for the last several months her bill has consistently been extremely high, 900 this past month, 1100 a prior month.

Her kWH usage is 4562 per month & I'm really not sure how she gets to that, she literally drives between 1 & 2 hours to work and back every day depending on location so she's only home in the evenings.

[nervxzx]

too expensive..