How big is your electric bill?

[dennyjones]

An Erie, Pennsylvania woman was surprised this week with an electric bill which equaled nearly the entire GDP of the country of Chile, the Erie Times-News reported. 

The Times-News reported that Mary Horomanski received an online statement claiming her account balance was $284,460,000,000. The "good news" was that her minimum payment was only $28,176.

After discovering the bill, Horomanski had her son call Penelec, Horomanski's electric supplier, for an explanation. 

“My eyes just about popped out of my head,” Horomanski told the Times-News “We had put up Christmas lights and I wondered if we had put them up wrong.”

It turns out that Horomanski didn't do anything wrong. It was simply a decimal put in the wrong spot, meaning her actual monthly bill was $284.46. 

A spokesperson for the electric company does not know how the error occurred. 

“I can’t recall ever seeing a bill for billions of dollars,” Penelec spokesman Mark Durbin told the Times-News. “We appreciate the customer’s willingness to reach out to us about the mistake.”

http://www.goerie.com/news/20171225/erie-woman-receives-284-billion-electric-bill

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/12/24/pennsylvania-woman-stunned-by-284-billion-electric-bill.html

https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/national/pennsylvania-woman-receives-284-billion-electric-bill

[David in FL]

That'll leave a mark!

My next door neighbor is a bit of a geek.  He has 17, count 'em, seven-freaking-teen tv's. Also 6 refrigerators and 2 freezers.  In summer his electric bill runs $1200+... 

[Patch]

We travel alot, and our RV is equipped with 1000 watts of solar panels, tied into 400 amp hours of batteries. So, our power bill is "0". Sometime we pay an extra $10 a day if we hook up to shore power. 

However,  the home we own in Vegas that we have leased out, the power bill runs about $800 in the hot summer months (June-August) and $400 average for the other 9 months. I have an agreement with our tenent where I pay anything over $500. Actually I don't really pay anything. He just deducts it from the monthly rent. About $1500 a year I am responsible for. 

[dennyjones]

33 minutes ago, Patch said:

We travel alot, and our RV is equipped with 1000 watts of solar panels, tied into 400 amp hours of batteries. So, our power bill is "0". Sometime we pay an extra $10 a day if we hook up to shore power. 

However,  the home we own in Vegas that we have leased out, the power bill runs about $800 in the hot summer months (June-August) and $400 average for the other 9 months. I have an agreement with our tenent where I pay anything over $500. Actually I don't really pay anything. He just deducts it from the monthly rent. About $1500 a year I am responsible for. 

OMG... I feel bad if we break $250 / month any month throughout the year.   There are many months during the spring and fall where we are under $100.   Michigan isn't too bad!

[chilepepper]

Our bill is pretty much zero. Of course we put in solar, break even will be in about 3 more years. 

[colin007]

22 hours ago, chilepepper said:

Our bill is pretty much zero. Of course we put in solar, break even will be in about 3 more years. 

When did you install?

[chilepepper]

6 hours ago, colin007 said:

When did you install?

2.5 years ago

[jamo]

Mine is about $100 in the summer months, south of $80 in the fall, and between $200-$400 in the winter and into the spring. 

I have an electric heating and AC system that seems incredibly efficient in for AC and incredibly inefficient for heating. I keep the AC on pretty much constantly when I’m home in the summer and leave the heating off as much as I can. I’m a bit lucky that I prefer to sleep cold, so I turn it down to 60 at night in the winter, and try turn it off completely when I’m not home (though when it’s too cold I leave it on 60). When I’m home in the winter I have it at around 66-68. 

I’ve tried to do all I can to keep the heating reasonable (it’s an apartment, so there’s only so much), but the system is pretty simple. I can’t set different temperatures for different zones.

The insulation in the floor of my first floor seems really terrible - the wood is always freezing. I put a rug over it which may have helped some, but not much. 

[No Mulligans]

After rebates and tax credits I paid about 8k for a solar system.  I now have no electrical bill.  The whole thing didn't make financial sense but I still wanted to install it from a green perspective.

[colin007]

16 minutes ago, No Mulligans said:

After rebates and tax credits I paid about 8k for a solar system.  I now have no electrical bill.  The whole thing didn't make financial sense but I still wanted to install it from a green perspective.

It'll pay for itself in a few years, no?

[No Mulligans]

1 hour ago, colin007 said:

It'll pay for itself in a few years, no?

It may take a while, my electrical bill before the solar was only about $50. It would be running more now as I run the AC more now that we have solar.

I am protected from future rate increases.

Edited December 27, 2017 by No Mulligans

[Ernest Jones]

8-1/2 x 11. It's usually 2 pages  .

[mcanadiens]

It depends on somebody's science experiments.

[jkelley9]

On 12/26/2017 at 11:33 AM, chilepepper said:

Our bill is pretty much zero. Of course we put in solar, break even will be in about 3 more years. 

For our next home, which we plan to buy a little more rural we think (if it works out), I plan to install solar panels. And a NG tank-less water heater (if the NG/electric rates are similar to where we live now, which may or may not be the case once we move, NG I get a much better bang for the buck here). They seem like fun projects, and I'm capable of doing them myself.

I had a pretty high electric bill for 2 full summers before I start asking around and wondering "why is my electric bill on a 2,600 sqft house $400?" Turns out the old air conditioning system upstairs that I knew was on it's last leg was running the compressor really hard, all the time, and apparently that's enough to nearly double your electric bill. Had the ****ing HVAC people recognized this earlier and I replaced it at that time I could have saved something like $1,500. I knew it was going to cost more... but I had no idea it could cost that much more running poorly.

Still not 250 billion dollars though :)

BTW I love the random-ass fact drops these articles do: "GDP of Chile." #handclap you went to the internet, found a GDP list, scrolled down the list until you were around that # and viola!