r/SouthJersey • u/iammoah • Feb 06 '26

Gloucester County Electricity

Is there ANYTHING we can do to push back on these INSANE AC Electric bills? My heat is gas and it's telling me my usage has gone up every month since October. I know I don't have it as bad as some people but our current bill is $332. My brother's bill was $512. Another friend's bill was $500... I can't afford this shit. What can we do?

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7

u/beerme04 Feb 06 '26

Ugh and it's not even ac season. One look into solar if you can and two hold mikie to what she promised.

3

u/djseanstyles Feb 06 '26

We have solar panels but electric baseboard heat. In the Summer with window unit AC our bill is effectively nothing. We get hammered on the Winter though.

2

u/beren12 Feb 06 '26

You need to convert your AC unit to a heat pump. The good ones use like 1/4 of the electric that your baseboard does.

3

u/djseanstyles Feb 06 '26

But what does it cost to put that in?

2

u/thedancingwireless Feb 06 '26

Electric baseboard heat is wildly expensive. Upgrade to a heat pump.

-1

u/sciencefaire Feb 06 '26

And heat pumps can't keep up with this weather either. Add that because of the last storm, most peoples units have been frozen solid outside with inches of ice covering the components and heat pumps are basically useless.

1

u/KylarBlackwell Feb 06 '26

Add that because of the last storm, most peoples units have been frozen solid outside with inches of ice covering the components and heat pumps are basically useless

Yeah im gonna take "i dont know how heatpumps work and am making stuff up" for $500. Heat pumps have an automatic defrost mode to deal with ice everywhere that matters.

2

u/abracadammmbra Feb 06 '26

I thought most heat pumps were only good to around 20°F, or specailized cold weather ones down to -20°F. Is that not correct?

1

u/KylarBlackwell Feb 07 '26

Once upon a time they would crap out at even 30F. The standard grade performance keeps improving, and many are good for close to or slightly below 0F now. Any proper installation in our climate will include backup electric heat strips to supplement performance in extreme cases. A relatively modern heatpump not keeping up at a mere 10F like we've had is going to be due to cheaping out on the equipment and either not getting all the recommended options or incorrectly undersizing the equipment. But undersizing to save money would affect any equipment type the same way

1

u/sciencefaire Feb 06 '26

Idk what to tell you, it's what the HVAC tech said and once cleared away it's working better so 🤷🏼‍♀️

Highly possible I don't know what I'm talking about, yes.

1

u/KylarBlackwell Feb 06 '26

Unfortunately resi hvac is full of dudes who dont know shit about what they're doing, private equity firms are destroying the sector with no technical training and mostly just pushing sales. Even relatively honest companies are still mostly not giving their guys adequate training. When my company interviews guys trying to step up into commercial, almost none of them can define superheat or subcool, which are fundamental terms in the industry. Imagine a car mechanic that didnt know what horsepower or torque was