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A lot of people are seeing much higher electric bills this cooling season. The higher bills are coinciding with the installation of new meters for many people. The higher bills coming on the heels of a new meter being installed have many Alliant Energy customers questioning their bills.
Alliant Energy spokesman Justin Foss says that the reason is not the meters, it is associated to something called “The Cooling Degree Day,” which looks at the intensity of the heat by combining the daytime and nighttime temperatures and relating them to the cost of keeping your home cool.
“What we found was that May’s Cooling Degree Index was 150% higher and it was 64% hotter than any May in the past 20 years. June, when you look at the cooling degrees days, was the hottest June in the last 20 years and was 53% hotter than normal,” Foss said.
That means, no matter how efficient your home is, no matter what steps you took to try to conserve on the cost of cooling, your bill was going to be higher.
“It means that customers were using a lot of energy to cool their homes down”, according to Foss ” some customers have a bill cycle that ran from mid-May through mid-June and would include all of that intense heat.”
Foss says that there are some steps you can take to help, such as using level billing to make your bill predictable, using heat reflecting curtain and shades on your windows and reducing the use of other heat producing appliances like ovens and clothes dryers during leak use hours, which tend to be the hottest times of the day. Alliant stresses the fact that the new meters are not causing people to have higher bills. He says anyone with questions or concerns can call Alliant customer service anytime with concerns or questions on their bill.
