[taeric]

500 a month sounds steep. I'm assuming you live somewhere that requires AC every day?

The article referred to driving prices up from 2020 due to making the infrastructure stronger by as much as 30%. Which, yeah, about 150ish of your bill.

It is less clear on how much it will need to go up because of increased demand? The prediction is 8%. Which, again, not nothing. But it is telling that there is more increase from infrastructure than there is generation? I don't know that that will change?

[hellisothers]

My bill last month was $450 and I don’t own an AC, it was around $350 before I got a plug in hybrid but every year it goes up double digit percentages.

[taeric]

I'm curious what your major costs are, then? Without AC, pretty sure our costs were not even half that.

Granted, my memory is largely from when we lived in a smaller house.

[SR2Z]

PG&E charges about 50c per kWh. It's not very hard to have an electric bill that high when electricity costs ~5x the national average.

[taeric]

Ish? I'm still not clear where you would be using that much electricity.

I'm not claiming that you don't. Or that you shouldn't. I'm genuinely curious on where the main use of electricity is.

To add numbers, an AC can use up to 5000 watts. That is literally 10x a refrigerator. Over 100x what a TV uses. The car, I'd guess is using a lot. But where are you using that much energy without AC?

That is, even compared to your 5x energy costs, I should have been paying more to keep a decent sized house running with AC in GA since I almost certainly had more than that multiplier on my usage?

[SR2Z]

You get a $500 bill for using 1000 kWh/mo - that's just leaving a 5000W AC on for 200 hours. My apartment AC is probably 2000W, but similar principles apply.

Add in a fridge, cooking equipment, water heating, leaving a server on, etc., and it should be straightforward to get to that number.

[taeric]

None of this contends with my question? I get how an AC can lead to an expensive bill. I'm assuming your numbers are to intend running the AC for daytime hours and that it will get you there. How do you get there without an AC?

About the only other large power use thing I could think of would be a pool?

Searching also shows average power bills in CA are 160? If focused on LA, it would be 200ish? What is putting some folks here so far above average? Was that the quarterly bill? I know we get bills every few months.