Yes - I understand that this post has a super clickbait-y title and includes a whiff of “sponsored advertisement below a Gawker article”, but I promise you that this is 100% real. I also wanted to do something funny for my first blog post - it has absolutely nothing to do with what I do for a living or am knowledgeable about, but it might do somebody some good.
Some of you may know this already (unsure of how common this knowledge is) but if you live in NYC (and use ConEdison as your utility), you’re technically able to route renewable energy to your apartment. The rates can be pretty variable (we’ll go into that) and there are different options for contracts, but it’s a fairly straightforward process that I will outline here.
I live in New York city, and got mad that my utility charged my twice the amount in January 2022 for the same electricity usage as they did in December of 2021. I also wanted to see if I could power my apartment with 100% renewable energy. I found a company that offers a contract for $0.089 per kWh, called Atlantic Energy. The contract is for 36 months (with no early termination fee), with delivery being provided by ConEdison. There are no monthly surcharges, from what I can tell.
So basically ConEdison gave many people (including me) a heart attack in January when everyone on a regular, variable utility plan realized that the price that they paid per usage of kWh went from about $0.07 for December, to almost $0.17 for January (those were my rates). I also have roommates, so we split the bill every month - we also try to not waste energy, and like tracking our usage per month. When we realized that our usage hadn’t tripled (it had in fact stayed the same), I dug in and did some research to try and figure out how rates could be so variable over such a small amount of time.
The first thing I realized was that it wasn’t just me:
from “Thecity.nyc”:
The supply charge changes all the time, and it’s been high lately. But it’s important to know: Con Ed doesn’t set those rates. Neither does the state, nor any regulatory agency. Supply charges change as a function of the global fuel market. Electricity in New York state is largely generated by burning fossil fuels. Those fuels — mostly natural gas — are commodities, and in 2021, they drove energy prices to rise faster than any other commodity category, according to the U.S Energy Information Administration.