It’s no surprise that electric bills go up in the summer. The warmer weather obviously means you’ll use more energy. This also means there’s more of a demand for energy. However, there are a few other reasons that cause your electric bill to go up in the summer.
An Increased Cost of Supply
Electricity’s demand must continually be matched by supply. The law of supply and demand requires Texas to have more electricity than it needs, especially throughout the summer months. What this means is it has more power production available than necessary.
While some of this power production technologies run all the time, others only run most of the time, but not all the time. This is what’s known as a power plant’s “base load.” It’s typically the cheapest, because it’s continually available. However, there are also some power plants that only run at times of peak demand and these cost more. Visit our Texas Electricity Examiner blog for a list of all the electricity generation technologies.
When the market price for electricity increases, suppliers must pay more for it. This is true in both the summer and the winter, depending on the weather. It’s what explains the increased price for electric use in the summer in Texas.
An Increased Demand of Electricity
Understanding that you use more electricity in the summer in Texas, you probably wonder what uses it all. The biggest culprit of electric use in the summer is your air conditioning unit. In fact, these units account for about 5% of all electricity produced in the U.S. each year.
So, you can imagine how when these AC units start running at the same time it results in a considerable jump in the need for electricity. This will obviously push the price of electric use in the summer up. If you don’t believe this you can go outside and watch your electricity meter while your air conditioning is running. You’ll notice that while it’s on it spins faster than when it’s off.
Getting your first electricity bill in the summer is painful. However, now you at least understand why it’s happening and can start looking for ways to drastically reduce your electric bill.
