Have you noticed your utility bills have been high this winter? They’re certainly a lot higher than 12 months ago and the weather hasn’t been that much colder. Why is that?

The price of natural gas

Many households and businesses in the Northeast are heated with natural gas. This is what heats your water if you have baseboard or radiator heating, or the air in your forced air system. In most states the utility buys gas in the market either at the current (spot) price or via short term futures and passes this cost directly on to you, the customer.

Take a look at the chart below. This is the spot price of gas in dollars per million BTUs. As you can see this winter the price was over 70% higher than a year prior.

Source http://www.macrotrends.net/2478/natural-gas-prices-historical-chart

There are a lot of reasons for this: variations in the amount of production, the amount of gas in storage facilities, the demand from the utilities or other gas consumers, and so on.

But my electricity has gone up too!

In the Northeast almost 50% of electricity generation is powered by natural gas. Given the power plants have to buy their gas in the same market, this has a knock on effect on electricity prices.

Good news for Utiliz customers: we will have put you on a great low cost fixed price electricity plan so you won’t have felt the pinch on your electricity bill as others did!

Source https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix

If you want to protect yourself against these changing prices and live in a state with supplier choice, you may be able to shop around for better prices than those offered by your utility. Often there are plans available at fixed cost allowing you to plan ahead and budget for the winter season. Otherwise grab that extra sweater!

We created Utiliz to help bring the benefits of active utility management to the masses. Our service helps residential and small business customers consistently save time and money without having to understand the market or do the work themselves.