by Susan Duclos, All News Pipeline:
Summer officially starts on June 21, 2023 and with it comes some warnings about power outages, preparation, storm warnings, and spikes in electric bills as Americans try to stay cool on the hottest of days.
We’ll start with the energy costs, which according to the Energy Information Administration, will see a 2% increase from the Summer of 2022, on top of the increases seen in 2021-2022. While that is an average, we note that New England states will see an approximate 11% increase from 2022.
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Retail electricity prices in the New England states are some of the highest in the country, and we expect that summer 2023 retail prices in that region will average 27 cents/kWh, about 11% higher than last summer. Much of this expected increase in retail prices reflects regional natural gas prices that have been higher than in other parts of the country. The New England power market experienced record-breaking cold weather this past winter and, combined with limited natural gas pipeline capacity, added upward pressure to natural gas prices, which ultimately affects regional electricity prices.
With the overall higher prices due to inflation, especially food prices, extremely high electric costs aren’t something many Americans can afford right now, so mitigating the costs while still having the ability to stay cool during the Summer months, is on many minds as the heat approaches.
As we can personally attest to, central air conditioning is much more expensive than either window units are those nifty portable air conditions that will cool entire rooms in your home.
We learned this because living on top of a mountain where we have a basement which half of is built inside of the mountain, while the other half leads to a sliding glass door that is at ground level, then the main floor and the top floor.
Each floor has its own has a different temperature. The basement stays cool all year, no AC necessary, the main floor is only used for cooking, so rarely do we have to deal with even slightly warmer temps, but the top floor is always warmer than the rest of the house, getting quite hot during the summer months.
After years of spending a small fortune just so we could sleep comfortably on the top floor, we finally got smart and picked up a window unit for the bedroom, which cools the entire top floor, and boom, our electricity bill during the summer months because lower than ever, sometimes lower than in the winter months.
Whether in an apartment, a one story home, or a multi-level house, there are usually rooms you don’t use, so why spend good money to cool them?
Cheaper yet, those cute little one room portable air conditioners.
The point here is that with all the other increased costs, from food to clothing to appliances, the last thing most Americans need right now, is higher electricity bills each month.
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