[ale] Electric bill

[Jim Kinney]

They don't like Sean:-)
One of my annual reviews showed an overage of 400+. They applied it as a
credit to the next set of bills until it was gone.
GA Power. Yeah.
On Jun 25, 2011 12:08 PM, "Ron Frazier" <atllinuxenthinfo at c3energy.com>
wrote:
> That's very strange. Sawnee EMC will credit any overage to your next
> bill. However, if you come up short, they'll want the difference.
>
> Ron
>
> On 6/25/2011 9:48 AM, Drifter wrote:
>>
>> I would urge one and all to stay away -- FAR away -- from Ga. Power's
>> "Budget Billing service." The company, in cahoots with the <insert
>> adjective of choice> Public Service Commission has rigged this
>> "feature" to steal your money. The annual contract specifies in the
>> fine print that if the company over estimates the charges, they KEEP
>> your money. You don't get it back! Which means, of course, that they
>> have a HUGE incentive to over estimate your electric bill. I
>> discovered this painful fact when they offered to reduce our monthly
>> payment by more than 20% after the first year in our current house. So
>> I went back and totaled up the previous 12 bills and discovered that
>> we had overpaid by nearly $300. When I asked for the money back, I was
>> told, "Sorry, Charlie; the contract says we keep it."
>>
>> BUT . . . You can do the math yourself and not waste your money. Ga.
>> Power is perfectly willing to let you overpay your monthly bill most
>> of the year to build up a credit pool to apply to the summer months.
>> That's what we are doing now and it is working well.
>>
>> Sean
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Friday, June 24, 2011 08:14:01 pm Ron Frazier wrote:
>>
>> > I've had some similar thoughts and concerns with my PC equipment, as
>>
>> > well as several fans and air cleaners, etc. that I have. Here are some
>>
>> > things to consider.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > You may wish to consider budget billing, which will make your payment
>>
>> > the same each month. It won't reduce consumption though. If the
>>
>> > budget amount is too low, and if the winter or summer is particularly
>>
>> > harsh, you may get a big bill at the end of the year for any shortage.
>>
>> > However, in general, I like the same payment all the time concept.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > The Kill-a-Watt device was mentioned in the thread. I particularly
>>
>> > like the Kill-a-Watt EZ, available from Home Depot and others for
>>
>> > about $30. It has a neat feature that can calculate the time a device
>>
>> > has been on and show you accumulated energy usage, as well as
>>
>> > instantaneous usage.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Here's how you can gauge the impact of running any device. Be
>>
>> > especially wary of any device which runs 24 hours / day, as the
>>
>> > kilowatt-hours add up quickly. Here's what it would cost for each 100
>>
>> > watts of consumption on a 24 hour / day basis. Using 100 W (or .1 KW)
>>
>> > for 1 hour is .1 KWH or kilowatt-hours. The national average cost for
>>
>> > 1 KWH is about $ 0.10. So:
>>
>> > .1 KW * 24 HR / Day * 30 Days / Month = 72 KWH / Month. 72 KWH / Month
>>
>> > * $ 0.10 / KWH = $ 7.20 / Month to run a 100 W device all the time.
>>
>> > With electronic equipment, this can really add up. My laptops
>>
>> > typically pull about 30 - 50 W of power, so they cost about $ 2 - 3 /
>>
>> > Month to run all the time. My desktop, plus a couple of monitors (one
>>
>> > is my wife's), pull about 300 W, so running that all the time costs
>>
>> > about $ 21 / Month. You can use this type of math to gauge what type
>>
>> > of equipment you want to run and for how long. Those air cleaners I
>>
>> > mentioned pull about 50 W and so they cost about $ 3 / Month to run
>>
>> > all the time.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Sincerely,
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Ron
>>
>> >
>>
>> > On 6/4/2011 12:30 PM, David Hillman wrote:
>>
>> > > Our electric bill went up by $15 last month. Either Georgia Power is
>>
>> > > passing on some extra fees or we have to look at how we can use
>>
>> > > electricity more efficiently. Right now we have 3 laptops and 4
>>
>> > > desktops that are plugged in mostly all the time. One of the laptops
>>
>> > > (Macbook Pro) is usually plugged into a 21" NEC monitor pretty much
>>
>> > > all the time. One of the desktops is a dual 604 pin Xeon server with
>>
>> > > 4 hard drives--that's our VM server. The other desktop is a P4
>>
>> > > Prescott machine that acts as a security gateway appliance--it's
>>
>> > > running Untangle 8. The last desktop is a Core 2 Duo 2.66 Ghz
>>
>> > > machine for general use and media serving. Is that too much.? I
>>
>> > > was contemplating adding an old HP 4U server to the mix, but I
>>
>> > > thought better of it. My latest trip to Fry's had me thinking
>>
>> > > about replacing all of the servers with some of those Mini-ITX
>>
>> > > boards.
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > However, some of the boards feel pretty cheap and the others have
>>
>> > > way
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > more stuff than I need. Supermicro has a couple of dual Atom
>>
>> > > Mini-ITX server boards, but they are pretty expensive. You get what
>>
>> > > you pay for with those boards, though.
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > I was thinking it would be a good idea for someone to make a Mini-ITX
>>
>> > > server board with reconfigurable pin headers (future expansion), a
>>
>> > > couple of USB ports, and maybe 5 or so PCI-E x1 slots. The PCI-E
>>
>> > > slots can later be filled with a couple of LAN cards and a RAID card.
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > Some of the boards should have silent Atom chips and the others
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > should have 775 sockets. There are a lot Core 2 Duo chips that could
>>
>> > > be reused for light server use. We have about 5 Dell machines in our
>>
>> > > office with dead motherboards, but perfectly functioning C2D chips.
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > Even better, make them compatible with CoreBoot (LinuxBIOS).
>>
>> > >
>>
>> > > What do y'all think?
>>
>
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