What is you electric rate?

[kato]

Do you have geothermal? Are you mad at it? Or is your "angry face" aimed at your current heating bill?

Friends of ours have it, and they love it. The power involved is what it takes to run the fan to circulate air, and the pump to circulate the water (or whatever) in the ground. You don't need power to heat or cool any air, the ground does that. The start up costs are higher than buying a regular furnace, but there are grants to help bring it down. But then again,new furnaces are far from cheap too, so I think you can get pretty close.

[tweaker101]

Sorry I guess that I should have said that I was thinking of changing to geo thermal for our heat source and yes I am a little steamed at the was my power bill goes up every year. I will have to check into the possible money from grants to help reduce the cost of the system. I was just currious if it was all that cheap as there is only a few pumps to run and are there any maintenace costs on a yearly basis?

[kato]

Not sure about the long term. I just know that our friends have a monster huge old fashioned house that probably cost a fortune to heat before, and that they are loving it now. They've only had it for two years, so I guess it's too soon to tell about long term. I know that they figure it will pay for itself in a few years. There must be research on the web with some solid numbers somewhere.

[burnt]

16 cents/kWh and over half of it is based on the lowest rate which is when we have the highest consumption. So without the time-of-use factor it would be much higher.

McGuinty is gonna break Ontario.

[tweaker101]

No kidding 16cents per KWH that is crazy or a sign of what is to come for the rest of us?. Maybe solar power is not that crazy of a idea...just looks expensive at the current time or maybe a dam good investment for the future?.

[burnt]

That price is all-inclusive - delivery charge, debt-retirement charge, fees, charges for sleeping, eating, breathing - whatever they think they can tack on there.

Solar is insanely expensive, costing about $60,000 (down from 100G a couple of years ago) to set up a 10kW tracker w/inverter that then needs to have storage to hold what it puts out. What can you run with 10kW, a toaster, water pump and 1 stove-top burner?

I had more here but decided to start another thread about "greed energy".

[burnt]

Under Rural Issues - Greed Energy.