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☕ DrinkCoffeeAndProfit
Smart money moves before breakfast
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Inspiration Quote for the Day
“Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves.”
Andrew Carnegie
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The Morning Ritual
Half of Your Power Bill Cannot Be Shopped. That Is the Half Going Up.
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Find an electric bill from four years ago if you kept one. Put it next to the one on the counter. Same house, same lights, same habit of leaving the porch light on. The number at the bottom is not the same. The reason for that sits on page two.
Every bill has two halves. One of them you can shop around. The other one you cannot, and that is the one that has been climbing.
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In One Sip
► Residential power averaged `13.66` cents a kilowatthour across `2021`. Across `2025` it averaged `17.30`.
► The June `2026` figure came in at `18.34` cents. The rolling twelve months through June sit at `17.90`.
► Those are national averages from the Energy Information Administration, published August `26`. Your state can sit well above or below them.
► Supply is the electricity itself. In about a dozen states you can pick that supplier yourself and shop the price.
► Here is the part that matters. Delivery is the poles, the wires and the capacity to carry a peak hour. That half is not for sale. It is set in a public rate case and it applies to you either way.
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Why It Matters for Your Money
Put a normal house on those numbers. Say you use `900` kilowatthours a month, which is close to the American average. At `13.66` cents that bill runs about `$123`. At `17.30` it runs about `$156`.
That is -`$33` a month for the identical electricity, or -`$393` across a year. Nothing in your house changed. No new freezer, no new habit. The price of moving the same power to your meter changed.
Now the uncomfortable part. Most people who try to fix a power bill go shopping for a cheaper supplier. That is the half that has been flat to gentle. The steep half is the delivery line, and a supplier switch does not touch it by a single penny.
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The Wealth Angle
Now here is the part most people miss. Delivery is priced for the worst hour of the year, not the average one. The grid has to be big enough for the single hottest afternoon. Everybody pays for that capacity every month, used or not.
Which means any large new customer that lifts the peak lifts the number that gets shared. That is not a scandal. It is how the arithmetic works, and it is why the delivery line moves in steps.
The useful consequence is that the delivery half is decided in public. Rate cases are filed, docketed and opened for comment at your state utility commission. I have never met anyone who reads them. I also think it is the only part of this bill a household actually has a vote on.
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☕ Key Insight: You can shop the electricity. You cannot shop the wires. Four years of increases landed mostly on the side with no competition. That is why switching suppliers keeps feeling like it did nothing.
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Coffee Break Move
If you are comfortable: Get one bill and find the two subtotals. Supply on one line, delivery or distribution on the other. Write down what share delivery is. Then search your utility name plus the words rate case at your state commission site. If one is open, the docket will say what is being asked for and when comments close.
If you are stretched: Call the utility and ask two questions. Is budget billing available, which flattens the summer and winter spikes into one steady payment. And is there a rate rider you qualify for. Both exist on most utilities and neither is advertised. Budget billing alone can move `$60` of a July bill into January, which is the month it hurts less.
One more thing worth ten minutes. If your meter was replaced recently, ask whether you were moved onto time-of-day pricing. That plan rewards a household that runs the dryer at night. It punishes one that does not. Plenty of people were moved onto it without ever picking it.
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