Submitted by ancisfranderson t3_10azpms in providence
Got a gas bill for $250 for December. This seems absurdly high to me. I’m living in an older building and I assume it’s gas heated, but December was a mild month and we kept the heat relatively low (65ish). If it gets actually cold in February am I looking at a $400 gas bill? Is this normal?
>"WARWICK — Natural gas rates in Rhode Island are set to go up Nov. 1, but the increase won’t be as big as originally expected.
>State regulators on Friday approved a request from Rhode Island Energy to raise rates for the heating fuel that will see the annual bill for a typical customer that uses 845 therms go up by $89, or 9.6 percent. That’s well below the 15 percent increase the state’s sole gas supplier proposed in its initial filing with the Public Utilities Commission last month."
That’s good to know. You may be right.
I paid just about $400 last month for my two bedroom apt, I keep the heat at fuckin 60
This is rough. Thank you for giving me some kind of reference point.
That... Sounds like a gas leak. I'd look into your price per gas used. And then check if it's changed. It's possible you're using a ton of gas somehow without realizing it.
That's twice as mine and I have a pretty big 2bedroom double parlour.
I would start investigating where your heat is going. Are all your windows fully shut and locked? Storm screens? Etc?
Also worth checking out your hot water heater — is it using gas, and is it set way higher than you need?
This is why I gave testimony to oppose the sale of Narragansett Electric to PPL over a year ago but none of you all came out and backed me up!
half kidding, of course.
Fight for a people's power utility or they're gonna keep screwing us like this
Wasn't the meeting held at like 10am on a Thursday? My dude, I was at work.
Yeah dude in the middle of nowhere in Warwick too.
I took a half day, and took the bus, cause I knew it was gonna cost me a lot more than 4 hours lost wages in the long run.
Though jokes on me, it still went through so I'm out the 4 hours and the price gouging.
They were super brazen about passing the costs of the sale 100% on to us to they didn't even pretend otherwise it was bullshit
That's awesome that you went but insane that it was scheduled that way. Stay active. Lots more BS to attend at state and local meetings! Providence is lucky to have people like you willing to go the extra mile to attend such meetings.
They do it that way on purpose! Don't let them get away with it!!
> They were super brazen about passing the costs of the sale 100% on to us to they didn’t even pretend otherwise it was bullshit
Can you please explain what you mean by this?
In the hearing the AG (or the public utilities commission i can't remember which one) asked how they (PPL) were planning on financing the cost of the acquisition and they said very bluntly they planned on paying for it by recouping that cost from ratepayers.
No new sources of income or anything, just raise margin on customers and use that profit to pay off the purchase.
So even absent the increase in raw gas and electric costs we were going to get a 40% increase (IIRC) in their off-the-top add on charges just for the luxury of a name change basically
It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense since rates are regulated. Also, “raise margins to pay off acquisition costs” is pretty standard business practice, you don’t buy a business if it’s not accretive to profits. I’m not an expert on public records but I assume this would have been captured in the hearing minutes?
Yep it should all be in the minutes. But then why would we approve it? Our service has not improved, efficiencies have not improved, there was no benefit for the end user except a rate hike so two companies could trade the state like a pokemon card. We could have just said no! Literally no reason to approve it. We get a rate hike (which they also approved!) and nothing else!
It's one thing if we had no say but the public utilities commission could literally have said no! That's part of the deal for running a statewide monopoly!
How does change of ownership increase regulated rates above what they would have been under the previous ownership? Is there a "new owner profit premium" in the calculation? If not, then what's your theory?
they requested an increase in their ROE, and got it. Its up over 10% now, maybe 11% IIRC. The cost of the actual utilities, gas and electricity, are pass-throughs, PPL does no generation. The only prices they control are via their ROE which they have to request from the PUC every 3-8 years. They're locked in for the next 3 years, but it would have been not unreasonable whatsoever to tell the company to swallow some profit margin to offset current high pass-through prices but the PUC is entirely made up of former NatGrid beancounters so why would they ever do that? They're paying off their own purchase via that 11% profit margin and you bet your ass in 2025 they'll be back asking for 12 or 13.
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man why weren't you at the hearing?
My December gas bill for an old and drafty two bedroom apartment was about $93, which isn't far off from the year before.
RI Energy's website shows usage for both electricity and gas. Maybe check if your usage has gone up? Keep in mind things like cooking if you have a gas stove, and heating hot water.
65° is the upper limit in my apartment, usually closer to 62°. Sweaters, blankets, and cats come in handy.
I’m allergic to cats, any good alternatives?
Dogs!
There are allergen free cats? Or cats with less dander than others
There is a new kind of food that you can feed to cats to reduce the allergens.
Or sphinx cats, but they need to be bathed and oiled so they are higher maintenance. They also look like gremlins.
Hot water bottles (local business)
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You know the rates went up, right? Mine was about $300 for December, where is would typically be more like $240. I have been here 12 years so I have a pretty good set of prior bills to compare.
Two words. Merino. Wool.
The biggest culprit in any old apartment is a draft, often via old windows and non-insulated exterior walls. Here are two inexpensive solutions that you can install yourself and can potentially save you a bundle. I use these in my apartment and they work.
Window kit
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Frost-King-Indoor-Window-Insulation-Kit-3-per-Pack-V73-3H/100135637
Outlet kit
Based on everything I've heard on here and from friends, you should be thrilled your utilities are that low. I'm over here with $200 feeling like I won the apartment lottery.
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Paid $310 for December. Thermostat set to 60. Drafty old house.
$259 last month for my 3BR house with full insulation. Last December, January, February were 206, 230, 215.
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My bill was $409 for a 2 story 2 bedroom apartment, live alone. Keep it on 65. Lawd.
Mine was $210 for a one bedroom.. it was my first month and I thought I was hardly using the baseboard heating. Probably going with a space heater in the future
We keep ours at about 65 during the day and 58 at night. But we also got rid of our gas stove last year and use an electric one. 2 br, 1 floor ~ 900 square feet and our Dec gas bill was $150. There were a couple really cold days around Christmas.
last winter my drafty 1 bedroom Nov-Feb bills were all $350~ . I never had heat above 68. I kicked the temp down to 50 for all of March and basically only slept there. I spent the entire days anywhere else. Bill was still around $200). I moved to a new apt because of it.
I paid $12 last month for heating
PM_ME_ASS_SALAD t1_j475iid wrote
Mine has been insanely high too, I think the rates are gouged from inflation / corporate opportunism. Hasn’t been cold yet and my bills are higher than the coldest months of the last few years.