How Falling Gas Prices Do NOT Affect the Cost of Electricity to the Consumer

Okay,

Today’s post is more of a rant than anything else.
photo credit: johnwilson1969

I don’t think that it takes a genius to know that gas prices have gone down considerably compared to this time last year. In fact, just because of my curious nature, I logged onto www.nashvillegasprices.com (one of my favorite sites for checking out the gas price trends and locating the best station to fill up) to compare gas prices of today with those of five years ago. My reason for doing so was because I noticed something unusual about my electric bill from this April as compared to October of last year.

What does any of this have to do with building solar panel energy? About going off grid? And, why should that even matter for our plan to reduce our dependency on traditional electricity structures? Well, let me share something with you.

Last year in October of 2008, I used about 50KWH less than I have used for the month of March. Not that significant you might say.

The TVA Fuel Cost Adjustment (FCA) that was added to my bill in October 2008 was $5.75. A little irritating but okay. Well, this month’s bill TVA Fuel Cost Adjustment, which is again for 50KWH LESS than it was for October 2008 bill, is $10.51.

When I go to the website www.nashvillegasprices.com and compare gas prices during that time, to the gas prices now, they were almost TWICE as much. In fact as I look at my December 2008 bill I see that while I used 80KWH less than the October bill, I am paying an extra $13.85 for TVA Fuel Cost. The fuel prices in November and December of 2008 were the lowest we had had seen in 5 years!! But the gas prices the month or two prior were some of the HIGHEST!

Maybe I am just stupid. But, I don’t really understand or comprehend how fuel prices can be lower, but they are HIGHER on my electric bill.

Because of this I did a little research. First, I wanted to know what the FCA was. As defined on a site called http://www.tnelectric.org, FCA is defined as:

The cost to generate electricity has been rising and some costs have risen more quickly than others. To address those quickly rising costs, the Tennessee Valley Authority instituted an additional rate charge called the “Fuel Cost Adjustment.” The FCA is adjusted every three months, up or down, to reflect the rising costs of fuel used to generate electricity. The FCA also includes costs that are incurred when electricity has to be purchased from other utilities when TVA doesn’t have enough generation available. The FCA is not based on the rising and falling price of gasoline.

The exact page where I located this information is: http://www.tnelectric.org/fca.aspx.

So, there you have it. Obviously my bill reflects this truth, of the rising and falling price of gasoline not affecting this extra added cost in my electricity bill. It DOES say it is expected to go down in April. I shall see on my next bill I suppose.

All of this to say, the sooner our dependency on our local utility company is lessened or eradicated, the more control we will have over our own resources, and how we are obligated to spend our money in order to exist on a day to day basis.

If you are ready to get going and see how easy it is to do this, check out the top two online guides to building your own solar panel energy at:

www.buildsolarpanelenergy.com/earth4energy

AND

www.buildsolarpanelenergy.com/homemadeenergy

Until next time,

Let the sunshine in!

Lauren

Popularity: 1% [?]

Be Sociable, Share!