Electricity BIll

I just got our first full month bill from Edison and it's crazy high. I guess there's some type of tier pricing structure that penalizes you for using more electricity, kind of like our progressivepunitive income tax structure. Back in the apartment, I never went past Tier 1 pricing of $0.12/kWh since it was only me and my baseline was something like 500+ kWh per month. At the new house, our baseline suddenly dropped by half to 250 kWh per month. Since now there are three of us in the house, the usage has gone up but we're well into Tier 4 which is $0.25/kWh.

I was on the phone for 30 minutes with Edison and basically the PUC (Public Utility Commission) sets up the tiers and they don't care how big your house is. In addition, since we have gas appliances, our baseline drops further. So back when we were living in two apartments, our baseline was over 1000 kWh month but now it's ~25% of that. For about the same amount of kWh, we were paying $70/month total but now it's close to $120/month. What's even scarier is that we've only really lived here for 1/2 of the billing period. Sigh... the bill next month will probably be over $200 which seems ridiculous.

Maybe I should look into solar cells or a mini nuclear reactor. Hey, I may even get a tax rebate so I can get some of my taxes back.