Apparently, I jumped the gun a bit on the $119 gas/electric bill. I had called the automated number after the meter reading because I was *that* curious about what this month’s bill would be.
Got the paper bill today. While it was actually $119, there was a reason why. Our gas useage had been estimated last month at about 145 therms, but the reality was that we had used about 50. Because when they read the meter, the total usage for the last TWO months was only 90 therms. We had paid last month based on the high estimate, so this month, they voided the last gas meter reading and used this month’s, subtracting the difference from what it was two months ago. Since it was less, they credited us the difference because we’d overpaid. Basically, the gas bill came to $83 for this month.
The electric portion is another story. Our usage more than tripled from 331 kWh to 1,142, which cost us $200 (before the gas overpayment credit). That’s because we’ve been using the two electric oil-filled heaters constantly.
Although the actual payment this month will be $119, it would have been $280, only saving us $20 from last month’s $300 bill. But in this case, we’ve been a lot warmer than we were last month when we hardly used the heat and the one heater didn’t keep us toasty. We’ll try to find a better balance between heat and electricity this month, hopefully.
