The Cost of Keeping Warm

[bjarvis]

Our household furnace, kitchen stove, clothes dryer and water heater all use natural gas. Naturally, our consumption spikes during the winter then plummets to trivial levels in summer. To make our own finances easier, we take advantage of our utility's monthly averaged billing: they debit our household checking account the same dollar amount each month based on last year's consumption. Any surplus or deficit is settled annually at the end of January so we can begin a new cycle in February, making minor adjustments to the monthly dollar amount for the coming as needed to reflect changes in usage.

Our catch-up bill this month: $16.67. Out of a total annual usage of $1,264.67 for 905 therms consumed, that's a 1.3% error. Not bad!

In other interesting statistics, only 66% of our gas bill is actually natural gas. 30% is delivery & distribution, 4% misc taxes.

Comments

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

that's a helpful size of bill to have in the month when the christmas bills also come in

[apparentparadox]

I wouldn't try to save money by avoiding the delivery charges and picking up the natural gas yourself.