[ale] Electric bill

[Ron Frazier]

That's very strange.  Sawnee EMC will credit any overage to your next 
bill.  However, if you come up short, they'll want the difference.

Ron

On 6/25/2011 9:48 AM, Drifter wrote:
>
> I would urge one and all to stay away -- FAR away -- from Ga. Power's 
> "Budget Billing service." The company, in cahoots with the <insert 
> adjective of choice> Public Service Commission has rigged this 
> "feature" to steal your money. The annual contract specifies in the 
> fine print that if the company over estimates the charges, they KEEP 
> your money. You don't get it back! Which means, of course, that they 
> have a HUGE incentive to over estimate your electric bill. I 
> discovered this painful fact when they offered to reduce our monthly 
> payment by more than 20% after the first year in our current house. So 
> I went back and totaled up the previous 12 bills and discovered that 
> we had overpaid by nearly $300. When I asked for the money back, I was 
> told, "Sorry, Charlie; the contract says we keep it."
>
> BUT . . . You can do the math yourself and not waste your money. Ga. 
> Power is perfectly willing to let you overpay your monthly bill most 
> of the year to build up a credit pool to apply to the summer months. 
> That's what we are doing now and it is working well.
>
> Sean
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Friday, June 24, 2011 08:14:01 pm Ron Frazier wrote:
>
> > I've had some similar thoughts and concerns with my PC equipment, as
>
> > well as several fans and air cleaners, etc. that I have. Here are some
>
> > things to consider.
>
> >
>
> > You may wish to consider budget billing, which will make your payment
>
> > the same each month. It won't reduce consumption though. If the
>
> > budget amount is too low, and if the winter or summer is particularly
>
> > harsh, you may get a big bill at the end of the year for any shortage.
>
> > However, in general, I like the same payment all the time concept.
>
> >
>
> > The Kill-a-Watt device was mentioned in the thread. I particularly
>
> > like the Kill-a-Watt EZ, available from Home Depot and others for
>
> > about $30. It has a neat feature that can calculate the time a device
>
> > has been on and show you accumulated energy usage, as well as
>
> > instantaneous usage.
>
> >
>
> > Here's how you can gauge the impact of running any device. Be
>
> > especially wary of any device which runs 24 hours / day, as the
>
> > kilowatt-hours add up quickly. Here's what it would cost for each 100
>
> > watts of consumption on a 24 hour / day basis. Using 100 W (or .1 KW)
>
> > for 1 hour is .1 KWH or kilowatt-hours. The national average cost for
>
> > 1 KWH is about $ 0.10. So:
>
> > .1 KW * 24 HR / Day * 30 Days / Month = 72 KWH / Month. 72 KWH / Month
>
> > * $ 0.10 / KWH = $ 7.20 / Month to run a 100 W device all the time.
>
> > With electronic equipment, this can really add up. My laptops
>
> > typically pull about 30 - 50 W of power, so they cost about $ 2 - 3 /
>
> > Month to run all the time. My desktop, plus a couple of monitors (one
>
> > is my wife's), pull about 300 W, so running that all the time costs
>
> > about $ 21 / Month. You can use this type of math to gauge what type
>
> > of equipment you want to run and for how long. Those air cleaners I
>
> > mentioned pull about 50 W and so they cost about $ 3 / Month to run
>
> > all the time.
>
> >
>
> > Sincerely,
>
> >
>
> > Ron
>
> >
>
> > On 6/4/2011 12:30 PM, David Hillman wrote:
>
> > > Our electric bill went up by $15 last month. Either Georgia Power is
>
> > > passing on some extra fees or we have to look at how we can use
>
> > > electricity more efficiently. Right now we have 3 laptops and 4
>
> > > desktops that are plugged in mostly all the time. One of the laptops
>
> > > (Macbook Pro) is usually plugged into a 21" NEC monitor pretty much
>
> > > all the time. One of the desktops is a dual 604 pin Xeon server with
>
> > > 4 hard drives--that's our VM server. The other desktop is a P4
>
> > > Prescott machine that acts as a security gateway appliance--it's
>
> > > running Untangle 8. The last desktop is a Core 2 Duo 2.66 Ghz
>
> > > machine for general use and media serving. Is that too much.? I
>
> > > was contemplating adding an old HP 4U server to the mix, but I
>
> > > thought better of it. My latest trip to Fry's had me thinking
>
> > > about replacing all of the servers with some of those Mini-ITX
>
> > > boards.
>
> > >
>
> > > However, some of the boards feel pretty cheap and the others have
>
> > > way
>
> > >
>
> > > more stuff than I need. Supermicro has a couple of dual Atom
>
> > > Mini-ITX server boards, but they are pretty expensive. You get what
>
> > > you pay for with those boards, though.
>
> > >
>
> > > I was thinking it would be a good idea for someone to make a Mini-ITX
>
> > > server board with reconfigurable pin headers (future expansion), a
>
> > > couple of USB ports, and maybe 5 or so PCI-E x1 slots. The PCI-E
>
> > > slots can later be filled with a couple of LAN cards and a RAID card.
>
> > >
>
> > > Some of the boards should have silent Atom chips and the others
>
> > >
>
> > > should have 775 sockets. There are a lot Core 2 Duo chips that could
>
> > > be reused for light server use. We have about 5 Dell machines in our
>
> > > office with dead motherboards, but perfectly functioning C2D chips.
>
> > >
>
> > > Even better, make them compatible with CoreBoot (LinuxBIOS).
>
> > >
>
> > > What do y'all think?
>

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