Title: Over Twenty Million Households Struggle To Pay Energy Bills, It Will Get Worse Source:
[None] URL Source:[None] Published:Jun 13, 2022 Author:Tyler Durden Post Date:2022-06-13 18:54:22 by Horse Keywords:None Views:482 Comments:12
Over 20 million households are behind over $23 billion on their utility bills as we head into a blisteringly hot summer...
I can only imagine why my bill went up. Likely to absorb the cost of non payers
I actually looked at one of my electric bills about six months ago. It seemed really high, so I poked around a little bit and found out the freezer in my refrigerator was running at -20 F. I rejiggered the air controls and thermostats over several days and managed to almost cut my electric bill in half. I have two deep freezers in my garage, I don't need my fridge running like that, it's not designed to anyway.
I've been messing with my A/C today, it wasn't keeping up so I cleaned the filters. I've got the capacity right on the hairy-edge where it wont be able to keep up on super hot days, like the next three days, but it's worth not going for 100% for the 10 or less extreme days per year. I should be able to hold 80-85 on 100 degree days.
My AEP stock, parent of I&M Electric, dividends probably pay my electric bills anyway, but waste not, want not.
Inside coil froze solid a few days ago when we had a big hen party here for our #6 (honorary) daughter. Twenty women and the doors open a lot. We have 4 heat pumps here -- upstairs, downstairs, garage-converted-to- rec-room-and-laundry, and my office/lab in the back yard.
Probably about twelve years ago, I bought an AirTap A7 (7kBTU?) add-on heatpump and mated it to a high-line 40 gallon, self-cleaning electric water heater. I replaced the 240 volt elements with 120 volt low Watt density units as a backup and had timers on the heatpump to only run when needed. (Edit) I've still got the post-it note schedule on my kitchen wall. LOL.
That thing was awesome. I put a duct kit on it to exhaust the cold air into my living room to help with the A/C in the summer. I got my hot water cost down to $125/yr for two people. Recovery was slow as molasses, but I didn't need much.
The thing got taken out by the lightning strike several years ago and AirTap is long gone. It was a fun experiment. The water heater is still in service with the 120 volt elements, but it's only dealing with one person 90% of the time.
(Edit2) Hey, you're an injuneer. Why couldn't you make a refrigerator work like a heat pump? Exhaust the hot air outside in the summer and get the cold air from outside when it's cold. I was getting ready to look at that before I got killed. Seems you should be able to do that with ducting, fans and a temp sensor, no? I don't think you'd need any fancy reversing valves that are a service nightmare.