I've got the Power...bill

Our electricity/gas bill is ridiculous. That's the only way to explain the almost 300 dollar bill that we just paid. Ridiculous. No only is it ridiculous, but wasteful seeing how much of our electricity still comes from coal and not renewable resources.

My husband suffers from hypothyroidism, which is probably the reason that he's CONSTANTLY hot. He'd be happy in a t-shirt in 40 degree weather. The fact that he now has to wear a coat in winter (when I'm completely bundled up and chattering) or that he is capable of getting cold, is a new concept for him. I sympathize with his plight of hotness, but he keeps our AC at 72 (okay, I've managed to push it up to 74) all the time and I'm COLD. It is NOT right to be cold and wearing a sweatshirt when it's 100 degrees outside. I think it is training his body to never get used to adapting to heat, and making me more susceptible to getting ill.

We do try to save energy though. For example, when we moved into this house, the first thing that we did was change all of the bulbs to florescent bulbs. My hubs likes them, and I like the idea of saving money. The ones that they have now that are less 'white' and don't make my head hurt. Also, they don't take forever to warm up either. I used to have nightmares about walking into rooms, flicking the switch and having it be really dim. Something bad was in the room but I wasn't going to be able to see it until the freaking fluorescent light warmed the heck up! Yeah, wasn't a fan.

Moving on...I get that we pay a premium for having the AC on but what is that premium?
Let's check out my bill:

Customer charge: 7.50
EmPower MD charge 4.00
Distribution Charge 54.19
RSP(wtf?)/Misc. charges that I'm pretty sure they make up 9.42

wait...I'm paying 75.11 before we even get to the electricity that we used? Are you freaking kidding me? My parent's electric bill isn't even that much in total! Okay..then we move onto the actual electricity that we used, which is about $194. This includes me turning up the AC 3-4 degrees most days when my husband leaves for work. It also however reflects that the temperature was above 85 degrees for 195 hours this last month.

So what the heck am I going to do to lower this bill? We already closed off vents in rooms we aren't using, but it doens't seem to have made a difference (nor do those rooms even get hot). I turn up the AC when the hot one isn't home, and I think actually I'll buy him a fan and keep the AC up more. I can help him with cooling devices like our neck coolers, cool clothings and air flow. This is better than the AC being up super high anyways! We change our filter constantly, but we do need to check out cleaning the coils. We aren't going to sign up for electricity cycling--it's my husband's worst nightmare, so please don't suggest it. Once we take AC out of the equation, what is left?

I decided to check out the other electricty busting appliances...like the dryer. This puppy uses 4400 watts vs the fridge which uses 57-160 watts. The dishwasher uses 1200 watts, but if you don't heat the water, only 200. So I decided to cut down on using both. When I was growing up, we always had a cloths line. We would take our stuff out, hope it didn't fall on the ground or get bugs on it, and hated using crunchy towels. Now, apparently in an attempt to see it's effect on my electricity bill, I am going back to crunchy towel town.

In the last year I stopped drying half of my clothing in the dryer anyways because I was sick of my shirts shrinking up (not getting too small, just too short!), and when I recently bought a bunch of new clothing realized that I'd been blast heat drying most of my stuff, most of my life. The 'normal' setting is medium...NOT high. Yeah, this explains the holes in clothing and why they never lasted long, right? My dad gave some suggestions on where and how to hang a line, and I put in a request that one be put up in the basement. We live next to misquito breeding ground, and it's so insanely muggy here lately that nothing would dry outside (not to mention the HOA probably could care less about the environmental impact of a cloths line and just see it as impacting the quality of their cookie-cutter houses. We need to buy better line, but the one thinner line he managed to hang between two bookcases across our basement worked well enough to dry about half of a load of towels. I did throw the rest of them into the dryer on 'air only' because they were SOAKED (I'm not sure our washer spins them enough) AND I had no where to hang them. My bedroom has been the defacto place to hang stuff lately, so I'll hang up the shirts on hangers, and put them spaced around the room (on doors etc) to dry, then lay flat other stuff on the drying rack, blanket rack, ironing board and elliptical (see I'm using the workout equiptment). I'm also running the dishwasher less, re-using/better about washing dishes between uses and reusing instead of grabbing new dishes and making my husband put a kill-o-watt thing on his computers to show how much power they are sucking while he's at work not using them. I'm also unplugging more stuff, and being better about turning off lights.

What is your power bill (will you share?) and what have you done that has been effective in lowering it? What do you keep your AC setting on? Am I working for the greater good of helping preserve resources, or simply making life more difficult?