Life in Tee Harbor, Alaska

Our Electric Rates Increasing 400% - Ouch!

Our town's main source of electricity was damaged on Wednesday.  Our power comes from a hydroelectric plant way south of town and the lines go through some steep, rough terrain.  Anyway, there was a major avalanche that took out about  1 1/2 miles of the transmission line and damaged the towers.  The power company has us on their backup generators right now until they can repair the lines, but this won't be for another 2 to 3 months.  They have to wait until the avalanche danger has passed and until all the snow has melted before they can make repairs.  So, until that happens, the rate for our power is estimated to increase from $0.11 per kilowatt hour to $0.50 or more...  ouch!!  For our house that means our bill which was $127 last month would be about $520 next month.  The city is requesting state and federal funds and has declared it a disaster, but this may not qualify for funds, so we are not counting on that.  (www.juneauempire.com)

We have already been reducing our electrical usage over the past 2 months, but obviously we will need to do some more tightening as will everyone in town.  I think the big things we are using now are our water heater, refrigerator, forced air furnace (occassionally), clothes dryer and a heater in our camper.  The camper will probably be just fine without the heater for awhile.  We could be burning the woodstove more so that the furnace doesn't come on at all.  We talked about turning the refrigerator off and using blocks of ice in it to keep the food cool and moving all the frozen stuff to the big freezer.  If the weather would warm up I could start using the clothes line again and not use the dryer as much.  Maybe we could get more serious about changing out the water heater to an on-demand model...it might pay for itself sooner if the cost of electricity is so high!

Untitled Comment

4:08 AM, Saturday, April 19, 2008 .. Posted by haflinger

Good morning and I boohoo..about ours.. I guess I won't anymore.. My electric bill was $39.00 and the delivery charge was $70.00.. I think that is terrible..It cost more to get it than to use it..
Do you have any drying rack u could put in hoop houses?
Blessings Sister Brenda

Yuck!

1:32 PM, Monday, April 21, 2008 .. Posted by Sarah

Oh Michelle, that's terrible! What a huge blow when you have been trying so hard. At least you do have a few ways you can cut back. Can you use oil lamps, flashlights or candles for light? Thank God for the woodstove- great timing on that! I hope they are able to repair the lines sooner rather than later. Hang in there!

Yikes!

5:57 PM, Monday, April 21, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

WOW!!!!!!!!!
You have some great ideas about ways to reduce even farther. At those prices I think I would almost do anything I could to use NO electric! We heat with wood, but use fans to blow the air throughout the house. I do dry over half of our laundry on drying racks next to the wood stove.
UNPLUG EVERYTHING unless you are using it. Things like this make me wish we were off grid!!!!!!!
Heather
www.choosingsimplicity.blogspot.com