Gas Bill Update

My gas bill cycle ends on January 26th, and I have managed to lower the estimated cost by about half from $335 to $173.

I did this by lowering the thermostat until the interior of my house is freezing and replacing some of the heating with electricity. I am unsure how much more electricity I am using for heating, but I have added three heaters and an electric blanket since the beginning of this year.

Another component of the initial high estimate was the low baseline. Like electricity from Edison, SoCal Gas also predetermines how much gas usage is baseline, and each additional Therm (or kWh) used will cost ~50% more per unit. I assume this is to encourage people to reduce usage, but in a time of super high commodity costs, utilities should suspend this punitive pricing structure. My gas baseline is 47 Therms. With five days left in the billing month, I have already used 40 Therms and incurred $143. Remember, this is after transferring and unknown cost to my electricity bill and freezing my ass of every time I leave the bedroom

Since January 9th, I have been drastically reducing my gas usage. The chart says my average usage is now about 1.06 Therms per day. If you divide 47 Therms by 30 days, that is about 1.37 Therms per day. It is definitely possible, but since I live by myself, I use very little gas for cooking and hot water. If there was a family of four or five living in this house, they would find it very difficult to keep their gas bill under $400 this month.

Here is an updated chart of natural gas commodity pricing. It has dropped further from $3.98 to $3.13 just this month. As I mentioned in the last post, consumers will not see any decreases until six-to-nine-months later due to commodity contract delays. Same reason why we did not see the huge price increase during last summer.

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For about two weeks, I had the thermostat set at 64°F. That turned out to be a bit too cold for me so now I am back to 66°F. Still too cold but it is at least tolerable.