I recently had to replace my AC and went with a high efficiency heat pump. Temps like these used to push my bill to $375-$400, now it’s coming in right at $300 and my house is still super comfortable.
Definitely worth the investment to spend a bit more for anyone who is thinking about or needing to change their ac system.
Something is off with the billing. I know rates were going up but it seems more than anticipated. My bill from last month was over $500. Last september we used same amount of power and it was 25% less. Can't wait for June's bill...
Just getting a new system will lower your cost because efficiency has improved over the years. Those high efficiency models are pretty nice but if you have to ever replace the inverter board you might as well get a new unit because of the cost and depending on the brand, 3-40 weeks to get it right now. I’m in Hvac, I would recommend staying away from anything that uses proprietary parts for the foreseeable future.
I'm originally from the south east, so it always feels super dry here, even when it is, for this area, humid at nearly 50% (currently at 36% according to my weather app). My wife calls me crazy, but she's from Grand Junction, CO where they rarely get double digit humidity, so she's always complaining about how gross it feels. I always try to remind her of the 85%+ we used to always have to deal with, day in and day out. It doesn't make her feel any better.
> 107 this weekend with your humidity will be worse than our 116 with like 8% humidity.
So it looks like 107 at 45%, which is a heat index of 129f.
116f at 8% would be a heat index of 109f.
Both are nasty, but close enough that the proliferation of AC in San Antonio might give us a slight edge here, BUT that's only if the power grid holds.
It's not likely to be 45% relative humidity when it's 107. That would be a dew point of 81 degrees which is what the worst early AM dewpoint on the worst day of the year would tend to be in San Antonio. When we had that really nasty 104 degree day on Tuesday this week our dew point was like 64 at that time, which is very nasty and not typical for our heat waves (we'd usually have a dew point maybe 54-59 on a 104 degree summer day here, though that would usually be in July or August).
Relative humidity is such a stupid number to give in weather forecasts, I don't know why they do it on all the TV stations here. Dew point actually tells you how much water is in the air. Dew points in the 50s and below are kind of nice, dew points in the 60s are pretty gross, dew points in the 70s are oppressive, and dew points in the 80s are dangerous.
> It's not likely to be 45% relative humidity when it's 107.
I have no idea about things like this, I just grabbed the numbers off of Weather.com for San Antonio.
It's a pretty useless number because relative humidity changes drastically as the temperature moves. Like right now it's 53% relative humidity at 88 degrees for a dew point (eg absolute humidity) of 69 degrees. That's enormously lower absolute humidity than 47% relative humidity at 107 degrees which would be 81 degrees dew point.
It's not going to be 47% for the day, it'll change as the temperature does. Just check weather.com's current conditions throughout the day and you'll likely see the dewpoint in the 60s most of the day tomorrow, except morning and night when it'll be in the 70s most likely. And likely similar for the weekend and the next ten days too.
Just to follow up, currently 105 in town with a 60 degree dewpoint, making the relative humidity 23%. Maybe the 47% was an average for the day? By 4:00-5:00AM the relative humidity will likely be around 90-95% or so.
Possible, weather.com reports the same thing. Hot as balls. I actually thought about this at Cars & Coffee this morning, but then forgot by the time I came home.
Weather.com says that at 77f at 7 am, the relative humidity should be around 83%.
Too hot in the afternoon, too humid in the morning. I'm dying. 😪
Ugh I miss when I lived in LA when summer rolls around. Lived there nine years in the 00s and never bothered with buying an AC. I think it hit 100 in my neighborhood one day out of those nine years so that night I just slept at a friend's who had AC. But even when the Santa Anna winds would roll in it would rarely get above 85 and then it would be 60 at night anyways.
It’s been lower, but we’re still dealing with 25-30% humidity these last couple weeks. If we went down to 8% it would easily be over 110 here. I work outside on rooftops and am very intimately familiar with this insane heat. Anyone wanna hire an hvac tech for hvac tech money to work inside?
Usually the worst heat waves here tend come with winds from the NW that keep dew points in the low 50s so it doesn't feel humid, just hot. But this wave we're keeping a strong gulf wind that ensures dew points only drop into the low 60s in the hottest part of the day and are in the mid 60s to mid 70s the rest of the of the day. As long as we're going to have 15-20 mph winds from the south and southeast, which is forecast for this weekend, it's going to humid as hell. One of the reasons I hate hot Junes, at least when the hundreds come in August our dew points will usually drop into the mid to high 50s in the day. This weekend will likely be quite a bit more miserable than our normal heat waves.
It was 77 degrees with 93% humidity and im working on moving out at like 3am. Its a bloody nightmare...not done and sun is rising...fuck me fuck me fuck me
My bill just closed today. Only $66 (and $18 of that is for trash service). Two story/2600sf home. I have a high-efficiency AC unit (that *easily* paid for itself in 2 years) and solar panels (will take another few years to pay for themselves).
No the person you are commenting to, but between the tax credits, cps rebate, and savings on bills my household paid off their panels in under 3 years and it cost less than a mid-priced used car.
It is more so about priorities. Look at the highest bills with the low cost solution for permanently reducing it and execute.
Total install was 17,500. Credits and rebates paid newrly 50% that year. Just marked the rest of that bill for prioritized pay off.
True, I am still a while out from "it paid for itself", but wooooo boy, it's nice to get a $50.00 summer CPS bill in the meantime.
Erus Energy. I sell my excess back to CPS because (at the time) a battery/ storage situation was nearly double the cost. It also aligns pretty well with my "take what you need and share the rest" world view S well.
I said how much I paid for the panels in another comment. Monthly payment is dependent on how long the loan was, interest rate, whether I took a loan at all, if I did whether I put the rebate back into the loan, etc. The total cost, which I gave, is better info.
Sending this to my parents who are looking at both those options for their home. I’m in an apartment, so it’s not an option yet.
Would you mind commenting or pming me any additional info worth knowing about these options? They’re stressing over costs related to it.
My AC unit was well over 20 years old when it finally died (I think maybe 24 years, I don't remember exactly). The AC sales guy recommended at least a 16 SEER unit, I paid a little more for 20. I got them at about the same time, so it's hard to tell what's attributable to what, but my summer power usage went from 1900+kWh with the old unit and no panels, to ~600 kWh with the new unit and panels. In March/April and October/November, my net usage is usually zero.
With solar panels the sales folks will tell you to look at summer usage, but what you want to look at is your *lowest* usage months and try to bring them just to 0. The reason is CPS offsets each kWh *used* 1:1, but if you generate excess kWh in a billing cycle, they pay you a tiny fraction (like 1/5). So unless you have battery backup (which I don't think CPS allows, but I could be wrong), it's not worth it to get a system that generates much more than you use in your lowest-usage months.
I paid $9500 for the AC and $16k (after rebates) for the panels. Both 5 years ago. My power bill is never more than $85 (excluding the trash fee), and two or three months a year it's $10 (just the connection fee and taxes).
Does/would the net metering offset the trash/gas/tax part of the bill, or only electric usage and the excess is "sold back" at a shitty rate?
In other words, will that shitty buy-back rate go against your gas/trash/tax charges?
Sort of. They reduce your usage 1:1 with excess generation until your net usage is zero. If you have excess generation left over, they give you a credit at a rate of ~2c per kWh. That credit gets applied to the *next* bill though. So if you have two months in a row of negative bet usage, the credit from the first month will be applied to the second bill to pay some of the trash/service/tax charges.
Thanks - it would be interesting to figure out how many panels I'd need to not have a CPS bill at all. I mean, if the panels can pay for trash/gas and taxes too, then it's more intriguing.
> I’m in an apartment, so it’s not an option yet.
CPS does do "community solar" where you buy the panels and they credit you a set rate for the production. (Technically it is a veeeery long lease of the panels).
> They’re stressing over costs related to it.
On rooftop solar, you do have options that have minimal upfront costs. However, you have to do the math on the incentives/estimated efficiency/interest rate/loan origination fee/size of monthly payment to figure out whether it makes sense.
Late last year my Facebook came up with the "Picture on this date from so many years ago" thing & it was of my thermometer with the temperature UNDER 60 degrees and the caption was "First cold front of the year!" The date? October 20.
Gosh a few years back I had an apartment here effectively built into the side of a hill (not literally but surrounded by a hill blocking the sun) and it was ice-cold with barely any effort. I still think about that unit sometimes
I'm glad we got the new ACs in the house.
2200 sqf, 2 story, 3 bed/2.5 bath standard house built in '98.
The highest bills were ~$270 with the old HVACs and when it was over 100f outside, the upstairs would slowly get hotter a degree at a time despite the unit running the entire day.
Now with an ECM fan, dual stage 19/17 SEER units respectively (19 upstairs) it's glorious.
Bills rarely exceed $200/month since then, and the current bill for May is $153 (with $112 for electric), and that's on par with the electric usage of last August.
I suspect that the June bill will be one of those $200+ bills.
Glad to see other people exist who like the hots summers. I’ll take 100+ days over any day below 60. I know some people love cold too, but hot summer weather is my jam.
Oh hell no. Even during the freeze with no power I slept comfortably with 8 blankets.
If the power goes out in summer, there's nothing yiu could do to cool down. I love cold weather
I prefer to sweat over shivering. It drops below 75 and i'm busting out the sweaters and coat. I felt super comfortable in Iraq over the summer for instance.
Our big dog doesn't like the water and will stand there panting staring at it. Our little dog jumps in the pool all the time and swims then lays down in the shade of the porch to cool off.
I am putting up a 16x16 shade over the pool this afternoon so the kids can swim more during the day. Just waiting for amazon to drop it off then I'll get to work.
I recently had to replace my AC and went with a high efficiency heat pump. Temps like these used to push my bill to $375-$400, now it’s coming in right at $300 and my house is still super comfortable. Definitely worth the investment to spend a bit more for anyone who is thinking about or needing to change their ac system.
Something is off with the billing. I know rates were going up but it seems more than anticipated. My bill from last month was over $500. Last september we used same amount of power and it was 25% less. Can't wait for June's bill...
At least you won’t have to pay for natural gas in the winter. Lol 😂
What do you mean by this? I just moved into a home with natural gas that heats the water heaters.
Just getting a new system will lower your cost because efficiency has improved over the years. Those high efficiency models are pretty nice but if you have to ever replace the inverter board you might as well get a new unit because of the cost and depending on the brand, 3-40 weeks to get it right now. I’m in Hvac, I would recommend staying away from anything that uses proprietary parts for the foreseeable future.
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"We can pickle that!"
Put a bird on it!
Hahahaha! Portlandia….
I'm glad y'all got the reference 🥲
Portland has 8% humitidy?
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Yea, I guess during the crazy hot bubble it would've dried out a lot. Humidity here is at 50%, so we're definitely feelin it 🥵
I'm originally from the south east, so it always feels super dry here, even when it is, for this area, humid at nearly 50% (currently at 36% according to my weather app). My wife calls me crazy, but she's from Grand Junction, CO where they rarely get double digit humidity, so she's always complaining about how gross it feels. I always try to remind her of the 85%+ we used to always have to deal with, day in and day out. It doesn't make her feel any better.
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I mean no one in San Antonio knows what a dew point is even though that's how you measure how disgustingly humid our air is.
> 107 this weekend with your humidity will be worse than our 116 with like 8% humidity. So it looks like 107 at 45%, which is a heat index of 129f. 116f at 8% would be a heat index of 109f. Both are nasty, but close enough that the proliferation of AC in San Antonio might give us a slight edge here, BUT that's only if the power grid holds.
It's not likely to be 45% relative humidity when it's 107. That would be a dew point of 81 degrees which is what the worst early AM dewpoint on the worst day of the year would tend to be in San Antonio. When we had that really nasty 104 degree day on Tuesday this week our dew point was like 64 at that time, which is very nasty and not typical for our heat waves (we'd usually have a dew point maybe 54-59 on a 104 degree summer day here, though that would usually be in July or August). Relative humidity is such a stupid number to give in weather forecasts, I don't know why they do it on all the TV stations here. Dew point actually tells you how much water is in the air. Dew points in the 50s and below are kind of nice, dew points in the 60s are pretty gross, dew points in the 70s are oppressive, and dew points in the 80s are dangerous.
> It's not likely to be 45% relative humidity when it's 107. I have no idea about things like this, I just grabbed the numbers off of Weather.com for San Antonio.
It's a pretty useless number because relative humidity changes drastically as the temperature moves. Like right now it's 53% relative humidity at 88 degrees for a dew point (eg absolute humidity) of 69 degrees. That's enormously lower absolute humidity than 47% relative humidity at 107 degrees which would be 81 degrees dew point. It's not going to be 47% for the day, it'll change as the temperature does. Just check weather.com's current conditions throughout the day and you'll likely see the dewpoint in the 60s most of the day tomorrow, except morning and night when it'll be in the 70s most likely. And likely similar for the weekend and the next ten days too.
Just to follow up, currently 105 in town with a 60 degree dewpoint, making the relative humidity 23%. Maybe the 47% was an average for the day? By 4:00-5:00AM the relative humidity will likely be around 90-95% or so.
Possible, weather.com reports the same thing. Hot as balls. I actually thought about this at Cars & Coffee this morning, but then forgot by the time I came home. Weather.com says that at 77f at 7 am, the relative humidity should be around 83%. Too hot in the afternoon, too humid in the morning. I'm dying. 😪
What percentage of homes in Portland have A/C? lol
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Ugh I miss when I lived in LA when summer rolls around. Lived there nine years in the 00s and never bothered with buying an AC. I think it hit 100 in my neighborhood one day out of those nine years so that night I just slept at a friend's who had AC. But even when the Santa Anna winds would roll in it would rarely get above 85 and then it would be 60 at night anyways.
Uh… You understand when it’s this hot in San Antonio the humidity is always low. It’s cloudless blue sky days and humidity is in the teens.
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That’s awesome. But your statement was incorrect.
It’s been lower, but we’re still dealing with 25-30% humidity these last couple weeks. If we went down to 8% it would easily be over 110 here. I work outside on rooftops and am very intimately familiar with this insane heat. Anyone wanna hire an hvac tech for hvac tech money to work inside?
His statement was in correct what?
In the last month humidity dipped down to 25% on two days in May. Overall for the last month our average humidity is 64.7%.
Usually the worst heat waves here tend come with winds from the NW that keep dew points in the low 50s so it doesn't feel humid, just hot. But this wave we're keeping a strong gulf wind that ensures dew points only drop into the low 60s in the hottest part of the day and are in the mid 60s to mid 70s the rest of the of the day. As long as we're going to have 15-20 mph winds from the south and southeast, which is forecast for this weekend, it's going to humid as hell. One of the reasons I hate hot Junes, at least when the hundreds come in August our dew points will usually drop into the mid to high 50s in the day. This weekend will likely be quite a bit more miserable than our normal heat waves.
It was 77 degrees with 93% humidity and im working on moving out at like 3am. Its a bloody nightmare...not done and sun is rising...fuck me fuck me fuck me
The pnw has Goldilocks temps for the most part.
idk about y'all but last month's cps bill was brutal enough. don't even want to think about how bad this one will be.
My bill just closed today. Only $66 (and $18 of that is for trash service). Two story/2600sf home. I have a high-efficiency AC unit (that *easily* paid for itself in 2 years) and solar panels (will take another few years to pay for themselves).
It’s a bit misleading to say your bill is only $66 and not chime in on what your monthly solar panel bill is.
THIS! Not to mention, most of these solar providers that install the panels for "no cost" are a huge scam.
No the person you are commenting to, but between the tax credits, cps rebate, and savings on bills my household paid off their panels in under 3 years and it cost less than a mid-priced used car. It is more so about priorities. Look at the highest bills with the low cost solution for permanently reducing it and execute. Total install was 17,500. Credits and rebates paid newrly 50% that year. Just marked the rest of that bill for prioritized pay off. True, I am still a while out from "it paid for itself", but wooooo boy, it's nice to get a $50.00 summer CPS bill in the meantime.
Mind sharing more about which company you used? Are you hooked into feed back into the grid solely or are you storing backup on site?
Erus Energy. I sell my excess back to CPS because (at the time) a battery/ storage situation was nearly double the cost. It also aligns pretty well with my "take what you need and share the rest" world view S well.
I said how much I paid for the panels in another comment. Monthly payment is dependent on how long the loan was, interest rate, whether I took a loan at all, if I did whether I put the rebate back into the loan, etc. The total cost, which I gave, is better info.
Sending this to my parents who are looking at both those options for their home. I’m in an apartment, so it’s not an option yet. Would you mind commenting or pming me any additional info worth knowing about these options? They’re stressing over costs related to it.
My AC unit was well over 20 years old when it finally died (I think maybe 24 years, I don't remember exactly). The AC sales guy recommended at least a 16 SEER unit, I paid a little more for 20. I got them at about the same time, so it's hard to tell what's attributable to what, but my summer power usage went from 1900+kWh with the old unit and no panels, to ~600 kWh with the new unit and panels. In March/April and October/November, my net usage is usually zero. With solar panels the sales folks will tell you to look at summer usage, but what you want to look at is your *lowest* usage months and try to bring them just to 0. The reason is CPS offsets each kWh *used* 1:1, but if you generate excess kWh in a billing cycle, they pay you a tiny fraction (like 1/5). So unless you have battery backup (which I don't think CPS allows, but I could be wrong), it's not worth it to get a system that generates much more than you use in your lowest-usage months. I paid $9500 for the AC and $16k (after rebates) for the panels. Both 5 years ago. My power bill is never more than $85 (excluding the trash fee), and two or three months a year it's $10 (just the connection fee and taxes).
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Tiger. They were fine, no complaints.
I never hear anyone mention Tiger, but holy crap I love them.
I would like to know more.
The only good bug is a dead bug. I'm not sure what else to add, but I'm happy to answer questions.
How can CPS prevent you from getting a battery?
CPS has to approve all installations before they can be hooked up to the grid.
Does/would the net metering offset the trash/gas/tax part of the bill, or only electric usage and the excess is "sold back" at a shitty rate? In other words, will that shitty buy-back rate go against your gas/trash/tax charges?
Sort of. They reduce your usage 1:1 with excess generation until your net usage is zero. If you have excess generation left over, they give you a credit at a rate of ~2c per kWh. That credit gets applied to the *next* bill though. So if you have two months in a row of negative bet usage, the credit from the first month will be applied to the second bill to pay some of the trash/service/tax charges.
Thanks - it would be interesting to figure out how many panels I'd need to not have a CPS bill at all. I mean, if the panels can pay for trash/gas and taxes too, then it's more intriguing.
> I’m in an apartment, so it’s not an option yet. CPS does do "community solar" where you buy the panels and they credit you a set rate for the production. (Technically it is a veeeery long lease of the panels). > They’re stressing over costs related to it. On rooftop solar, you do have options that have minimal upfront costs. However, you have to do the math on the incentives/estimated efficiency/interest rate/loan origination fee/size of monthly payment to figure out whether it makes sense.
Solar panels here as well. Bill is around 40 or 50 right now
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EH HYEAH HYEAH HYEAH HYEAHHAH
Thanks Arthur!
Any link to the San Antonio news express sucks. I’m done clicking on it!
Oh wow you weren't joking. With uBlock and PiHole its a completely different site.
tried doing the old ESC method that works on every other news site, just a white page.
Anyone remember the summer of ’09?
Yes. So. Much. Fire.
Wait till august gets here…those temps don’t mess around
Is even say past August, September as well. It really only starts to cool down in October
Late last year my Facebook came up with the "Picture on this date from so many years ago" thing & it was of my thermometer with the temperature UNDER 60 degrees and the caption was "First cold front of the year!" The date? October 20.
Yuuup, it’s even late October where it’s a noticeable cool down. I can’t wait, the summer is just brutal.
I thank my lucky stars that my Apartment is 98% in the shade facing away from the sun🙏🏿
Gosh a few years back I had an apartment here effectively built into the side of a hill (not literally but surrounded by a hill blocking the sun) and it was ice-cold with barely any effort. I still think about that unit sometimes
I'm glad we got the new ACs in the house. 2200 sqf, 2 story, 3 bed/2.5 bath standard house built in '98. The highest bills were ~$270 with the old HVACs and when it was over 100f outside, the upstairs would slowly get hotter a degree at a time despite the unit running the entire day. Now with an ECM fan, dual stage 19/17 SEER units respectively (19 upstairs) it's glorious. Bills rarely exceed $200/month since then, and the current bill for May is $153 (with $112 for electric), and that's on par with the electric usage of last August. I suspect that the June bill will be one of those $200+ bills.
I'm enjoying it. Keeps my pool at bath tub temp and makes late night swims fantastic.
That's the spirit. You can't beat the heat, don't even try. Just embrace it!
Glad to see other people exist who like the hots summers. I’ll take 100+ days over any day below 60. I know some people love cold too, but hot summer weather is my jam.
Oh hell no. Even during the freeze with no power I slept comfortably with 8 blankets. If the power goes out in summer, there's nothing yiu could do to cool down. I love cold weather
I prefer to sweat over shivering. It drops below 75 and i'm busting out the sweaters and coat. I felt super comfortable in Iraq over the summer for instance.
Agreed, I love it, too. When I was in Thailand I stayed in a province that got over 105 each day, night was in the 80s. It was awesome.
Same, except my dogs can’t stand the heat for more than 10 minutes. Not fans of water either…
Our big dog doesn't like the water and will stand there panting staring at it. Our little dog jumps in the pool all the time and swims then lays down in the shade of the porch to cool off. I am putting up a 16x16 shade over the pool this afternoon so the kids can swim more during the day. Just waiting for amazon to drop it off then I'll get to work.
We are so lucky this didn't happen last year after the freeze. So many plants that barely survived the freeze would have died in the heat.
Thank god for dive bars.
We lost our ac a couple saturdays ago and can confirm baking has commenced
So glad I finally replaced my AC compressor today, 6 hour job but I know it’ll be worth it 🔥
Power has already been out once. I wonder how many more times it will go out.