Sheffield Utilities

Unless you know the meter readings each month, there is not much you can do about it. You could go check your meter every month on the same day and record your usage and compare it to your bill. But you can't go back in time to do it, only going forward.

More likely, you and your neighbor live in similar homes and had similar usage during the cold snap.

You are not alone!

I have a close friend who lives in Sheffield and their light bill is unreal every month.About the same amount as you posted,every month.

They have insulated their home,sealed windows,etc..went to the electric dept. disputing it for years and nothing has changed--they pretty much told them to get over it,pay it or have them shut off.

Good luck to you.

If sheffield records the meter reading on your bill then compare it to what is on the meter now. Florence puts the gas meter reading on your bill so you can see for yourself. We had a huge gas bill in the middle of summer once and it turns out the reader misread it by 100 unit.

I was able to look at my bill and find the problem.

Ours is with Sheffield too, our bill usually doesn't go over $185.00 per month, unless we have a real bad cold spell. It might reach $225 then and we have a large 2 story home. But we keep our thermostat on 68.
If I were you I would read my meter when they read it.

always a good idea to check your meter about the same time they read it and compare.
Most utilities estimate your reading every other month, so you may have an estimated bill. They should be able to tell you that if you ask. If so, it will all work itself out next month. Maybe the last bill was estimated too low.
Still better to read the meter and then you'll know.

The way you know you need to replace the element in your hot water heater is if you run out of hot water halfway thru your shower. Don't fix if if it ain't broke . I doubt if having an element out on your hot water heater would cause your bill to go up any, and in fact, may save a few bucks depending on which element is out.

If your old hot water heater goes bad, replace with an on demand heater -- uses much less power.

A bad hotwater heating element is not going to draw any current, so your bill should have gone down. However, if it is coated with minerals, it will have to work harder to heat the water.

With a bill that high you must have used about 6300 kilowatt hours of electricity. Unless you live in a 10,000 square foot house, that is way too much. You may want to have somebody check your heat pump out. If it can't keep up with the temperature, it may be automatically switching over to emergency heat which is going to make your meter spin like there is no tomorrow. My heat pump had a rupter in the condenser line that leaked out all my freon last month. Was a couple of days before I noticed I had been running on emergency heat and my bill was a lot higher than usual.

I looked into the on-demand water heaters a year ago. The current draw for a whole house heater when in use is tremendous and I did not have enough capacity in my breaker box to install one. The gas on-demand heater required a 3/4" gas line, which I did not have. Install price was going to be cost prohibitive.

How many square feet are you heating?

How many days are on your bill?? I have about 1600ft in a two story and my bill is $372 for 29 days. You also need to look at the number of 'degree days' listed.
Degree days are a measure of the difference between 65 degrees and the average daily temperature. This measure assumes that above an average daily temperature of 65 degrees no heat would be required. We had a lot of cold nights last month and in January.

i think a lot of bills are higher than usual lately...i'm in florence, all electric, mine usually runs about $110-$125...jumped to $180, then $247!!..i have friends with usually 'normal' bills, jumped to $600, another at over $700...

I posted on this earlier. I live in Sheffield. My utility bill has DOUBLED since November.

HOward, Hoober, or anybody else that may know !
Speaking about water heaters, do you know anything about solar heaters. They were popular before Reagan did away with the tax credits you could get for buying one. Anybody have any recent experience ?

quote:

Originally posted by excelman:
HOward, Hoober, or anybody else that may know !
Speaking about water heaters, do you know anything about solar heaters. They were popular before Reagan did away with the tax credits you could get for buying one. Anybody have any recent experience ?

I can't see them being cost effective at this time. Unless you convert all your lights and appliances to run on DC voltage you will have to use an inverter and many, many batteries to get any useful power out of it. May can use it to heat hot water, but I just don't see any savings when you factor in the cost to buy and install the system.

Ex co-worker of mine had installed a heat pump system that uses the earth to help cool in the summer and heat in the winter. The subsurface of the earth doesn't have a lot of temperature variability, so you just basically circulate water through it to provide cool water in the summer and warm water in the winter to the HVAC system. This greatly enhanced the efficiency of the unit. This alternative is much more affordable and once installed has very little maintenance, if any.

I just calculated that I paid 7.47 cents/kilowatt-hour from my power bill. I did this same calculation a while back and came up with 7.3 cents/kwh. We should all be paying the same cents/kwh. I'm not factoring in the garbage, water, sewer, or gas, just electricity. Anybody got a different number than me?

quote:

Originally posted by Mr. Hooberbloob:

quote:

Originally posted by excelman:
HOward, Hoober, or anybody else that may know !
Speaking about water heaters, do you know anything about solar heaters. They were popular before Reagan did away with the tax credits you could get for buying one. Anybody have any recent experience ?

I can't see them being cost effective at this time. Unless you convert all your lights and appliances to run on DC voltage you will have to use an inverter and many, many batteries to get any useful power out of it. May can use it to heat hot water, but I just don't see any savings when you factor in the cost to buy and install the system.

Ex co-worker of mine had installed a heat pump system that uses the earth to help cool in the summer and heat in the winter. The subsurface of the earth doesn't have a lot of temperature variability, so you just basically circulate water through it to provide cool water in the summer and warm water in the winter to the HVAC system. This greatly enhanced the efficiency of the unit. This alternative is much more affordable and once installed has very little maintenance, if any.

Hoober, thanks, but I believe you mistook what I was asking; not solar electric panels, but direct solar water heating.
Back in the 1st energy crisis, Carter instituted tax credits to people who would put them in, and since they cost at the time around $2000, after the credits, the installed cost was not too bad.
I was living in the Memphis area at the time, and a lot of people were putting them in, and as a result, a lot of small outfits were selling and installing them.
Reagan, in typical pro energy company fashion , did away with those tax credits and that entire industry dried up. Clinton tried to get them back, but the congress would have none of it. Lewinski was much more important to our economy and energy independence.
I heard somewhere that some of those credits had returned, but don't know how to find out, or who sells those heaters. If I could get one with a deal like in the 70's I would , and I was wondering if anybody knew .

Sorry excelman - How does that type system work?

quote:

Originally posted by Mr. Hooberbloob:
I just calculated that I paid 7.47 cents/kilowatt-hour from my power bill. I did this same calculation a while back and came up with 7.3 cents/kwh. We should all be paying the same cents/kwh. I'm not factoring in the garbage, water, sewer, or gas, just electricity. Anybody got a different number than me?

I got 8.15 cents, 4251 units at a cost of $346.40.
I live at Colbert Heights.

quote:

Originally posted by littlemeanmama:

quote:

Originally posted by Mr. Hooberbloob:
I just calculated that I paid 7.47 cents/kilowatt-hour from my power bill. I did this same calculation a while back and came up with 7.3 cents/kwh. We should all be paying the same cents/kwh. I'm not factoring in the garbage, water, sewer, or gas, just electricity. Anybody got a different number than me?

I got 8.15 cents, 4251 units at a cost of $346.40.
I live at Colbert Heights.

There must be a step up rate over a certain amount of kwh's used. I used about 3200 kwh's so it looks like the step up rate is somewhere around 3500 kwh's? Looks like a lot of us really used a large amount of power last month.

I got 12.2 I live in Sheffield.4689 units of electric used cost 382.81.

Hoober, figure that for me and see if I got it right.

Ms Wonka, your rate would actually be .0816 - about the same rate as the poster above in Colbert Heights is paying.

quote:

Originally posted by ms. wonka:
I got 12.2 I live in Sheffield.4689 units of electric used cost 382.81.

Hoober, figure that for me and see if I got it right.

You divided the wrong way. You went kilowatts/dollar instead of dollars/killowatt. Clemetine figured it right.

There has to be a step up rate somewhere after 3200 kwh's because I'm around 7.5 cents/kwh in Florence. Either that or Sheffield charges more.

Don't feel too bad, I talked to a person on another forum in California and they said they paid 22 cents/kilwatt-hour last month to Southern California Edison. Your bill would have been $1031.58 if you lived there.

quote:

Originally posted by Howard Roark:
If your old hot water heater goes bad, replace with an on demand heater -- uses much less power.

Are they much more expensive than the regular water heaters? Ours is 16 years old, probably time to replace it.

quote:

Originally posted by Taciturn:

quote:

Originally posted by Howard Roark:
If your old hot water heater goes bad, replace with an on demand heater -- uses much less power.

Are they much more expensive than the regular water heaters? Ours is 16 years old, probably time to replace it.

Whole house on-demand water heaters are more expensive.

Make sure you have enough space on your distribution panel before you buy electric. A whole house heater requires a dedicated 120 amp breaker. I only have a 200 amp panel, so it was out of the question for me.

If you look at gas water heaters, you will have to run a 3/4" line, plus if it is mounted inside you will need to install a vent out the roof.

Also, the on demand heaters will only heat the water up a certain amount of degrees above the incoming water temp. So, during the winter when the incoming water is colder, you may not get water that is as hot as it would be in the summer due to the added temperature differential.

I did a bit of research and if I had an extra 2 grand to spend, I would get the gas water heater.

quote:

Originally posted by Mr. Hooberbloob:
Sorry excelman - How does that type system work?

Solar panels on your roof heat a fluid (some kind of antifreeze solution) that goes to a heat exchanger where that heat is transferred to water and stored in a tank (usually a large tank, about 100 gal or so) for household use.
In climates where water would not freeze at night, the water itself can be pumped thru the solar panels, but that's for them who ain't got no bad weather.
There were a lot of these that got put in during the 70's around Memphis at least, didn't see many of them around here when I moved. Did look at one house here that had one.
A small electric pump was required to circulate the antifreeze solution, and on some of the later ones, it was run by a solar electric panel.
I'll see if I can surf up something.

PS: I found this explanation, it is an add for the company but has some good info:
http://www.solarroofs.com/going/index.html

Thanks for the info excelman.

quote:

Originally posted by Mr. Hooberbloob:
Thanks for the info excelman.

You are more than welcome.
There is an old publication "The Mother Earth News" which came out in the 70's and is still around today. Most of the earlier issues were kinda self published, but they grew and evolved. Now not so much do-it-yourself as the old version.
They had a lot of information about alternate energy projects both from a commercial standpoint, and a homeowner. They had an article on hybrid cars back in the 70s. All their old issues are avaliable on CD's in 10 year increments. Although I have about 10 years of the actual publications, I went on and ordered the CD versions.
Many of the articles in that mag had an effect on my thinking about the earth and how we use energy. Of course I don't follow the "self-sufficient" lifestyle of the mag, I do recommend it as reference to what's going on in the area of energy.
You may want to check them out here:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/

quote:

Originally posted by Mr. Hooberbloob:
Don't feel too bad, I talked to a person on another forum in California and they said they paid 22 cents/kilwatt-hour last month to Southern California Edison. Your bill would have been $1031.58 if you lived there.

i have a friend who lives in wisconsin, she was here last week these high bills came in...she was aghast at the prices..they have a 5 bedroom house, paying $35 last month for power, with her highest bill at $50...how can that be??

quote:

Originally posted by thehippiegirl:

quote:

Originally posted by Mr. Hooberbloob:
Don't feel too bad, I talked to a person on another forum in California and they said they paid 22 cents/kilwatt-hour last month to Southern California Edison. Your bill would have been $1031.58 if you lived there.

i have a friend who lives in wisconsin, she was here last week these high bills came in...she was aghast at the prices..they have a 5 bedroom house, paying $35 last month for power, with her highest bill at $50...how can that be??

They don't use electricity to heat anything up there. Ask her what her gas bill was and you might feel better.

My home is a little over 2100 sq ft and my bill is about the same - actually a little lower- than it was last month. We used 1423 units of electricity and the electric portion was 115.22 - which is just a littl over .08 per unit. I haven't had a problem with the utilities dept./bills.

quote:

Originally posted by clementine:
My home is a little over 2100 sq ft and my bill is about the same - actually a little lower- than it was last month. We used 1423 units of electricity and the electric portion was 115.22 - which is just a littl over .08 per unit. I haven't had a problem with the utilities dept./bills.

If that's the case, then maybe ya'll do have something to complain about. Looks like Sheffield is tacking on an extra 1/2 cent per kwh.

How's that Hooberbloob? Should it be lower than .08?
I'm pleased and have not problems with them.

quote:

Originally posted by clementine:
How's that Hooberbloob? Should it be lower than .08?
I'm pleased and have not problems with them.

I paid 7.47 cents/kwh last month in Florence. I believe TVA sells wholesale power at the same rate to all co-ops. For some reason you are paying more than me.