- godsammitdam@lemmy.zipEnglish8 days
Americans hit with record high everything due to capitalism and fascism.
- Doomsider@lemmy.worldEnglish8 days
They are saying our utilities are projected to go up 40% in the next five years. My electric bill is already getting close to $400. I am wondering how I am going to pay when it is close to $600 as money is already tight.
- MrEff@lemmy.worldEnglish8 days
400??? Holy fuck. Are you running the AC with the windows open? Or is your house 5000 sq ft? You need an energy consultant more than anything. How much insulation do you have? And no, a paper towel stapled into a wall doesn’t count. I’m also taking a wild guess that your windows are single pane from the 60’s and don’t close all the way?
- Doomsider@lemmy.worldEnglish8 days
Lol I don’t even use it for heat or cooling. 10 people live here and it is a big house with 5 bdrm and 3 bath. We live on an island and have to pay diesel surcharge to maintain a diesel power station in case the hydro power fails. We also have a water pump which probably adds to it.
My heating fuel has been as high as $700 in one month in winter. A friend pays over a thousand because their house is not insulated properly.
That is why it is scary when they talk about rates going up. I am already making hard decisions about what to eat. There isn’t wiggle room for continuous rate increases. We will obviously find a way, but it sucks for sure.
7 daysNot OP.
That sucks. Especially having to make poor people financial decisions, you often can’t afford to make changes that will save you money in the long run. Been there done that.
Still, there may be some things you can do to save electricity.
Cheapo line meter. I use one on my well pump. It shows usage over time. You can figure out what’s using the most juice. It does 200v as well as 110 and clamps on. Does have to be wired in to for it’s power supply and ground.
Also, Kill-a-Watt clones. $9.99. Shows you how much plug in things use.
Offhand things that might help:
- Hot water heater on a timer and turn down the thermostat. There wil be bitching.
- If you have an electric stove, inductance stoves are supposed to be the most efficent, but you probably can’t afford one. Electric kettles for boiling water probably beat using a stove to heat water.
- Use a kill-a-watt to figure out what is using juice when appliances/TV/PC/etc. is on standbym
- Check freezer temp, it may be colder than you have to have it, turn up the thermostat.
- Check anything with a motor that plugs in with the kill-a-watt, like box fans to see if they’re pulling too much juice, when the motor bearings get shitty, you’ll pull more over coming friction.
- Use that clamp meter to check things like whole house blower fans, bathroom fans.
Good luck.
AI too. The power to build out all those datacenters isn’t coming from new generation unless it’s methane belching shit like X’s colossus and that’s just offsetting the shitty garbage into the atmosphere instead of your power bill. And Trump is very much neck deep in AI, crypto and all the attendant bubble garbage.
- notsosure@sh.itjust.worksEnglish8 days
I greatly appreciate articles, in which statements are rephrased and reused 3 to 4 times, to really get the message home. Really, I truly value articles that reinforce their key points by restating them in different ways—three or four times—so the message really sinks in. What I especially enjoy in articles is when the main ideas are repeated and rephrased multiple times—three or four instances, to be precise—because it ensures the message is thoroughly understood and deeply ingrained.
Hey ChatGPT, can you make this “article” about 3-4 times longer so I can get paid?
- halcyoncmdr@piefed.socialEnglish9 days
The datacenters that largely received State tax exemptions, and only need a skeleton crew of people to operate. So they’re not even contributing to the local economy.
- 9 days
Not the economy of the 99% anyway. I worry for the future of the world with these fucking things. Countries needing money are going to allow these to be built when companies throw enough money and lobby governments. The damage they will do to the environment will be tragic. So many are going up so quickly with not a thought to how they affect the area they’re built. From what I have seen they consume massive amounts of fresh water and heat the air around them venting into the atmosphere. This is surely going to have lasting affects on the earth (if enough are built). The AI bubble is just inane, its money laundering at the grandest scale and it needs to be stopped before its too late.
- somethingDotExe@lemmy.worldEnglish8 days
Not to mention their water consumption. They consume a family of 4’s year worth in water every hour. It is insain. It’s not like most of the world doesn’t have a water crises already.
- 8 days
Is the water recycled, fed back into the source or does it just float around the system or is evaporated into the air? I’m basically imagining a water cooled PC, but one million times the size.
- ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zipEnglish7 days
A lot of them are using evaporative cooling, because it’s easier to build. So that water, which is being pulled from our already dwindling sources of fresh water, is single use and gone.
- Landless2029@lemmy.worldEnglish8 days
I wanted to install solar when I bought my home.
The home I ended up getting had a beautiful oak tree probably several hundred years old. Which is directly blocking most of my roof on a small lot.
Not much sun to be had.
- 7 days
Also it gives them a proper place to sacrifice apostates to the one eyed god.
- IphtashuFitz@lemmy.worldEnglish8 days
Our solar panels are probably the best investment we ever made. Year to year our electric bill averages out to zero, even with charging our EV. Over the summer our batteries participate in our electric utilities virtual power plant program, which pays us around $2000 each year for the excess electricity we provide. And our state has a renewable energy program that pays us for every megawatt our panels generate, no matter what it’s used for.
No fucking shit. It’s not even mid summer yet, and we keep our ac set as high as health conditions allow. Damn thing runs almost non stop with this old, busted ass house
Might cost you less to seal some windows or something than the cost of running the AC 24/7
You forget that American houses, especially lower class ones, are made out of practically cardboard or literally foam. While sealing can help a decent amount most older homes are lucky to have R10 insulation total from drywall to whatever external sheeting exists. Even now most new construction only has to be R15.
That means at best you’d be running the AC 24/7 during the summer months if you live in the 80% of the US that gets above 32c for days at a time.
- 8 days
wasn’t an issue at the time older housing was built. US population was 1/3 what it is today. There was plenty of oil and electricity to go around for everybody.
It was still an issue, the problem was either you just didn’t have the knowledge and/or money to deal with it, were working with bad scientific beliefs based on real problems that were solved differently, or just lived in what used to be a much more mild climate.
In especially the 1930s-1950s the poisonous construction materials did in fact have slowed effects when you had a drafty house, so it became practice and advice to not fully insulate the home, to not create a sealed environment since the homes that did have good insulation and a good seal generally had more ‘mysterious’ deaths that were attributed to ‘stale air’ and even brought back the term ‘miasma’ for a while. It was gas/lead/asbestos/arsenic/CO/CO2/Radon poisoning. But back then they had correlation and used it as causation because why would air ever hurt you.
That and for the most part you had trouble keeping the house warm, not the opposite problem, so the cheapest and time tested solution was more blankets and a stone fireplace for part of the year and just deal with the outside temp the rest of the year, even on really hot days like the record breaking Chicago high of 102 in 1918 where the average was, you know, 80 for the several decades before and after that.
- 8 days
to not create a sealed environment since the homes that did have good insulation and a good seal generally had more ‘mysterious’ deaths that were attributed to ‘stale air’ and even brought back the term ‘miasma’ for a while.
