SMUD Increasing Rates And It’ll Cost You WAY More To Use Electricity During These Hours
By Admin on September 20, 2018
Starting next month, SMUD will start rolling out a new rate system. They plan to do this in phases that will run between October and April. And it’ll cost you more to use electricity between 5 pm and 8 pm on weekdays. You know, the time many people get home from work and watch TV, make dinner and do laundry?
SMUD provides electricity to more than half-million residences in Sacramento County according to the Sacramento Bee. Apparently they have begun to notify customers, although I haven’t received anything yet.
Now it appears SMUD is not alone in moving to this new rate system. Plus, it makes sense—they want to try to decrease usage at peak hours because it costs them more when everyone is using electricity at the same time. “With the demand and the price increases, it becomes difficult for utilities to keep sending (electricity at) a fair price to the customer,” said Alcides Hernandez, SMUD pricing supervisor. “The intent is that SMUD is not going to make any extra revenue from this.”
There will be no rate increase during the weekend. So, it’ll be interesting to see how many people just start moving their laundry to Sunday. And if that becomes a new peak hour.
SMUD says there might be a decrease in your bill if you adhere to the new rate schedule. If not, you will most certainly see an increase. In fact, if everyone keeps their same habits, 57% of people will have higher bills.
However, get ready for HIGH summer rates during the weekdays. From June – September, customers will pay 28 cents per kilowatt hour between 5 and 8 p.m. It was 13 cents per hour this summer and my bill was…let’s just say I like to run the air conditioning. It will also be 16 cents between noon and 5 p.m. and between 8 p.m. and midnight. So it’s either pay a lot and be comfortable, or pay a reasonable amount and melt. Me no likey.
Seeing the summer hours makes the rest of the year seem more bearable. It’ll cost 13 cents per kilowatt hour between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. and 10 cents the rest of the day.
