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If you live in Northeast Florida, you know from experience this has been a very cold early January. You can probably tell just by the number of layers of clothing you’ve worn to stay warm. In fact, the National Weather Service reports that from January 2 – 14, Jacksonville set a record for consecutive days of temperatures at 34 degrees or below. That new number is 13 days, breaking the previous record of 9 days set back in 2001 and 1977.
Heating and cooling account for most of the energy used in your home during any month of the year. With such extreme temperatures, and the corresponding additional amount of electricity used to keep your home warm, you can expect your JEA bill will be higher than normal and higher than it was last January. The chart below is a comparison of the average temperatures (the combined high and low for each day) in January 2010 (blue) and January 2009 (red) through January 13.
The blue columns representing 2010 average temperatures are far lower than those from last year in red. But it wasn’t just the first two weeks of January that has been colder than usual. December, too, was actually colder than the previous December in 2008. According to the National Weather Service, it was about 30 percent colder when comparing the average temperatures of both months. The colder the average temperature over the course of a month, the more time you are going to spend heating your home and that’s going to mean a higher utility bill.
Why is My Bill Higher When My Thermostat was set at 68 Degrees?
JEA does recommend that you set your thermostat no higher than 68 degrees during the winter months. We also recommend that when you leave your home during the day for work or school and at night, while you’re in bed, that you lower your thermostat at least five degrees to 63 degrees. Even with the cost to “catch up” to 68 degrees when you return home or wake in the morning, you will save money by turning down the thermostat for those 8 – 10 hours or more each day.
Even if you did these things, your bill is most likely going to be higher. The reason is because your heating system had to run longer to bring the indoor temperature up to 68 degrees. When its 20 degrees outside at night, your heat pump has to bring the indoor temperature up 43 degrees if you’re thermostat is set at 63. But when its 40 degrees outside at night, your heat pump doesn’t need to run as long to attain that same 63 degrees because it only has to raise the temperature 23 degrees inside your home.
The bottom line is that even if you were following our recommended practices, your bill is most likely higher. On the other hand, if you hadn’t followed these best practices, your utility bill would’ve been much higher.
But that’s Electricity… My Water and Sewer is Higher, Too.
In addition to the number of days at 34 degrees or below, there were nights where hard freeze warnings were in effect throughout the evening and into the next morning. To help avoid frozen pipes, many people leave their water trickling. However, if you left the water running throughout the day and into the next night and day, the effect is the same as if you had a water leak. You may have inadvertently used much more water than you normally would have. In fact, a faucet with a fast drip can lose between 20 – 30 gallons of water per day. It’s easy to see how that could add up if a number of faucets were left to drip for days over the cold snap.
JEA Rates and Your Bill
While JEA has raised rates over the past few years, we still have some of the lowest electric rates in the state. JEA is doing everything possible to keep our customer’s rates as low as possible while providing consistently reliable electric, water and sewer services throughout the service area.
Florida Utilities Monthly Residential Electric Bill Comparison as of January 2010 (Consumption @ 1,250 kWh)
City / Utility
GRT = Gross Receipts Tax, PST = Public Service Tax,
FF = Franchise Fees
What You Can Do Although there’s nothing you can do about the electricity you’ve already used, you can take steps to ensure you are using energy in the most efficient ways possible. Please check out our Conservation
section on jea.com where you’ll find more than 50 fact sheets
on ways to save energy and water.
Learning what you can do to save energy and water is the first step toward gaining control over your utility bill.
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