This is somewhat related to auto insurance rates. Back in 1953, my dad converted the attached garage at our house to living space and built a separate garage about 30 feet away from the house. The homeowners insurance premium went down.
Now I know car fires in parked cars are not real frequent, but our son’s in-laws 20 years ago had their Lincoln parked in the driveway outside the attached garage. In the middle of the night, a fault in the cruise control wiring started a fire. The car was destroyed and the fire jumped to the eaves of the house and caused considerable damage to the house.
I think about today’s EVs and hybrids with high voltage batteries. I wonder if these vehicles will cause homeowners insurance premiums to increase for houses with an attached garage. If not having the attached garage back in 1953:made for a lower insurance rate when the car we had was a 1949 Dodge and the only thing powered when the car was parked was the dashboard clock I wonder about the fire risk in today’s EVs and hybrids.
And filling your gas tank at 5.75/gallon doesn’t do that?
Electricity is about the cheapest thing there is. I pay more per month for garbage service than electricity. Sewer and storm drain costs more per month than electricity. So does gasoline.
My water and sewer runs about $70 a month. Garbage service is about $20. Gas and electric goes for about $300 and is headed straight up due to crazy legislation.
I didn’t pay great attention to it but there was a video on recalled cars due to fire. Not all electrics but fuel leaks, switches etc. about 18 of them told to park outside away from buildings. Some years ago my BILs mustang caught fire in the garage. Extensive damage an$ living in a hotel for six months.
It’s not just the cost of electricity, but what it would be if you also were charging your EV…
Paying for fuel (gas or diesel) is different, you only see the total for the number of gallons you purchased, it does not break down all the taxes included in the price of the fuel…
But when you receive your electric bill, they break done all those little taxes, surcharges, riders, etc…
This is my electric bill from last month… Granted it is not much by most folks standards… but you can see that our bill is many times higher than our actual usage… After that is the full breakdown for all the trivial additional add-ons… To get this you have to jump through hoops for that to be released…
Sewer and storm drain is about $130 a month. Water, 40 in winter, maybe 70 in summer when the sprinklers run. Garbage is $97. Electricity was $65 last month. Gas is the big variable. Summer months when it’s just cooking and hot water, maybe $50/month. January when the furnace is running might be 150-160. Don’t get me started on the $8000 property tax…
I’m not sure what your point is. Yes, my electric bill shows that I paid $65 for $20 worth of electricity. Certainly it would go up if I were charging an EV at home. Would it go up $500? Who knows?
We’re getting close to conflating 2 discussions, is driving a hybrid or EV about saving money or saving gasoline? Those are 2 different things.
The itemization of electric costs goes along with the desire people have expressed through their legislators and laws to be able to shop on an open market for those services. So the electric cost is separated from the delivery cost etc. Those costs always existed, you just never saw the breakdown before.
Doesn’t matter where you live, the infrastructure costs, maintenance and services… they get their pound of flesh one way or another. Around here, no income tax. However, they make that up with higher property taxes. Want to shed a tear? Live here and work in MA. Then you pay exorbitant property taxes AND relatively high income tax on your earnings where they get the majority of that state’s income. Double whammy.
Before I had solar panels my electric bill was 4-5 times the cost of my garbage service. It really depends on where you live. Not every part of the country has the same electric rates. We pay about $0.23/kwh.
… and if a Community Solar program comes to your area, I urge you to sign up. The solar panels are placed on open fields, and on the roofs of warehouses and industrial buildings, then the electricity is fed into the utility company’s grid, and members get a discount from their utility company. My discount is 21%, and it does make a difference.
In 1966 I added my Morris minor to my folks policy. The six month premium was $26. Rural Minnesota was never a high risk location, but stay out of Minneapolis.
Our water is about the same as most already shown… Trash pick up is not to bad…
I will take our high electric bill over most of y’all’s taxes… lol
Both houses are barely in the greater Nashville are for (NES) electricity, most of the other electric company’s are much cheaper… This house is the last neighborhood still in the NES gride…
Regretfully I am of the Mind Set “Not in my neighborhood…” I’ve mentioned in the past that my son is a master electrician who travels from one big job to another all over the country… He often works Solar Fields and Wind Farms and we have visited him on the job during and upon the completion of the job…
When we visited the Solar Farms there was plenty of noise pollution from inverters, lots of construction traffic, habitat loss due to leveling the ground and changing all manner of water run off to local streams and rivers… Some natural streams dried up or the runoff changed the chemistry due to the increased drainage from the solar fields… There was also flooding in neighborhoods that never experienced flooding previously…
When we visited him at various Wind Farms we could hear the Large Wind Turbines’ rhythmic “whooshing” or “swishing” sound, as we drove up to the wind farm and it was perceivable even from 1,000 feet away. And there was always mechanical noise (a low-frequency hum) from the generators, gearboxs, and cooling fans housed in the nacelle. These vibrations often produce both audible noise and low-frequency infrasound.
Now, I know that demand is severely outstripping supply and I know something has to be done…
But as my son explains it, the Rhythmic Sounds from Farms will affect your disposition—your inherent mood or emotional state—primarily through entrainment, a process where your internal biological rhythms synchronize with external auditory beats. This synchronization influences everything from your heart rate and hormone levels to your physical sense of stability.
And to end this on an upbeat note, I have a wife for that…
Had several recent newspaper articles about the scams some crooked solar companies are foisting on unsuspecting folks. Several examples of senior citizens being scammed. The business deals used to put in panels can be very complex and confusing, ripe for fraud. I’m sure there are legitimate companies, but folks should be careful.
The biggest scam here in NH are the Solar Panel Leasing programs. Before I bought my panels I did a lot of research and attended a couple seminars. I heard so many stories of how the Leasing was a joke. You are guaranteed at least a 30% savings on your electric bill for the first 5 years. And people were seeing that. But after those 5 years - the leasing company fees skyrocketed. Some people’s electric bills were MORE than NOT having the panels because of all the leasing fees. And it’s extremely expensive to get out of the lease - OR even sell your home because the leasing agreement is passed on to the new owner.
I finally had a chance to meet with an honest solar salesperson a few years ago. She was a former counselee of mine, and she was very blunt when she said, “It’s very unlikely that you would amortize this expense before you die”. She apologized for her bluntness, but I appreciated it and I also appreciated that she chose honesty over her commission from making a sale.
She was the first one to recommend that I sign up for “community solar”, and when my mayor–who I occasionally chat with while hiking–was the second one to recommend “community solar”.
We’ve had ours for a while now and it’s on track to have paid for itself in 7 years. If electric rates increase (which they will), we might pay it back in 6 years.
