Utility Bills

I was talking to my brother Andy the other day and it came out that I am paying more for gas and electric for my new-ish, super efficient house in a moderate climate than he is paying for his huge old house in the frozen wastes of the Midwest.

The electric charge is made up of 23 different charges, including Basic ($10) Energy Use (4 separate values), Transmission charge (2 values), Distribution charge (2 values) and Adjustments (14 values for a total credit of $7.04).

That all boils down to 9.2 cents per kilowatt hour.

So either my electricity costs more, which I kind of doubt since we are supposed to have the cheapest electric power in the nation being as it all (or most all) comes from hydro-electric power plants, or I am burning a lot more.

As for the gas, I do not know. We keep the thermostat set at 66 for the upstairs. The basement is heated by a gas fireplace that is also on a thermostat. It is a little vague, so it is hard to say just what the temperature, but it is on the cool side. We also have a gas fireplace that we run in the family room/kitchen that we turn on when we are there. These gas fireplaces are supposed to be something like 90% efficient, so I would not think we are loosing that much by using them instead of the furnace.

So I am wondering what is going on.

A couple definitions are in order here:

• A Therm is 100,000 BTU's.
• A BTU (British Thermal Unit) is defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of liquid water by one degree Fahrenheit.

230 Therms at 100,000 BTU each is 23,000,000 BTU. If we have to raise the temperature 23 degrees (say from 43 to 66) we can do it for 1,000,000 pounds of water. Divide by 30 days per month and that is 33,000 pounds of water a day. That is 16 Tons:


Tennessee ernie Ford - 16 Tons

So now I am wondering just how expensive electricity is, and in wandering around the internet I found a table which I converted to a Google spreadsheet. I got the data from a government web site. The nice thing about the spreadsheet is that you can sort the data according by a couple of different criteria, like alphabetically by state, or by this years electric rate, or by the amount of change. Mouse over the bar separating the header rows from the data in the column you want to use for your sorting order. The bar will turn orange and the word "Sort" will appear. Click on the little triangle next to the word "Sort" and you will give you a choice of order to use for the sort.

Note on the spreadsheet: It was not difficult to create the spreadsheet, just a couple of points and clicks. The government web site has Excel file you can download, and Google Documents can upload and understand it. I did add a column for percentage change from last year to this, and another column for region. The original spreadsheet has the states grouped according to region. If you do a sort on the original spreadsheet, like I did, you have lost regional affiliation. By adding a column for region, you still know what region that state is affiliated with, and you can also regroup the states into regions. It will not be exactly the same order as the original, but it's close enough for government work.

Note on the [deleted] video: There does not seem to be any limit to the number of versions of "16 Tons" on YouTube. I picked this one because it hit a chord with me (no pun intended). It : 1) is obviously foreign, 2) is an amateur production, and 3) the small audience really seemed to like it. The words start off being almost unintelligible, but it gets better as it goes along. Makes me wonder if he actually knew the words he was singing, or whether he was just mimicking the sounds, something that is rumored to be common in Eastern Europe. I did not find any versions in a foreign language, which I thought was a little odd. Maybe YouTube is not the place to look for foreign language videos. Tennessee Ernie Ford's version is the original, and the best. When I started this story the only version I could find by Ernie wasn't a video at all, just a single photo. But by the time I finished this story, it was gone: "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation."

Update October 2016 replaced missing image.
Update December 2018 replaced missing video with Tennessee.