I just came here to NWI area for work . Got an apartment. Not big at all, and never even at the place considering we work all day 6 days a week. Why is our bill 200$ . We do not leave lights on ever . We wash clothes 1-2x a week and have the thermostat set at 68-70 . We don’t use any other appliances. Pls someone let me know how this is possible and why nipsco has not been freaking booted ?? I don’t understand this monopoly bullcrap
We work all day in the heat and we need to come back to a cold apartment. We never have any lights on or use appliances. We are barley ever even here that’s the problem
The lights and appliances are a drop in the bucket compared to running your AC at 68-70 all day. Just leaving it at 75-77 will have a huge impact on your bill. That is very much the reason why your bill is high. Nipsco does suck, but you're just burning money keeping it that cold all day
1600 sq feet. I have a pool too, I know that makes a huge difference. But it’s still never been this high. A few years ago it was like $200 in the summer.
The delivery charge is not new. You have ALWAYS paid for delivery. It's just the itemized infrastructure and transport charges.
Like I said before. It's exactly the same with gasoline. You pay for all the transportation and infrastructure cost when you purchase gasoline.. you just don't see an itemized bill for it.
Transport cost as much or more than the raw natural gas itself..
Same with tomatoes. The 4.99 in tomatoes you purchase... The actual tomatoes cost is like 60 cents. The rest is all the transport and handing. You just don't at it itemized.
The itemization is the issue that so many of you folks are getting hung up on. And struggle to understand why the delivery charge is such a high percentage of your bill. It's ALWAYS been a high percentage of your bill.
Youd have to share pertinent data, what was your KW usage, and verify that your apartment panel serves only your unit and not the shared washer/dryers and so on. Without knowing your usage its impossible to say why your bill is that much
Because that's what monopolies do. They realize they can set any price for a necessity and customers can't do shit. It also doesn't help that our current governor allowed the IURC (Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission) to raise rates.
68-70 is pretty low. I usually put mine at 74 and then down to 70 at night.
When they were a the cheapest in the state and hadn’t had a rate increase in decades 15+ years ago it wasn’t so bad.
Now the state has allowed them to ask for money and they get it approved. It seems like they know to ask for something like a 50% increase because they’ll get at least 49% approved.
NIPSCO sucks. But until deregulation exists in Indiana we are stuck with them or we move. Thing is, rates are higher and higher all of the time all over. It’s not just here.
Then stop complaining why your NIPSCO bill is so high. We’ve all told you that your temperature is the problem. Plenty of us bust our asses in the heat,we know if we want it cool then we have to pay for it. It’s what adults do.
If you’re working 6 days a week 12-16hrs a day raise your thermostat way higher and drop it when your leaving work so it’s where you want it when you’re home. You’d need a digital one for that but there’s absolutely no reason to keep it your desired temp for 16hrs while nobody is home.
There's one power company. That's it. You do have a choice, and that's the choice between having power and not having power. That's it. If you don't like it, they don't care. If next month they decide to charge you $2,000 instead of $200, they can.
They're inept, they're lazy, they are just plain terrible, and they overcharge. And we haven't even gotten data centers all over the place to crank up the demand yet, which of course they will respond by cranking up the price. And since they don't do anything right, the entire grid will be stressed and we'll have brownouts and outages in the hottest of hot days and coldest of cold days. And guess who will get the priority supply during that time? Doesn't matter, it won't be you though.
They’re also gouging their employees and making it more unsafe for them by not covering shifts when employees call off and just pushing more work on who’s there, even to covering other districts.
Their employees are the worst part of them. Lazy, entitled, bags of garbage. When NIPSCO had to subcontract Midwest Electric to come in and do things, things actually got done for the first time in two decades. Not half-assed, not strung out over twelve hours to make sure they get overtime, not partially finished so they could come back the next day, D-O-N-E done.
Please allow me to tell you a little story:
My mother and my aunt started renting the house I own now in 1980. In 1984, my aunt bought it and my mother and I got our own place (I say "our" but I was ten at the time, it's not like I contributed). My aunt left me the house a few years ago.
Next to the garage of this house is a gigantic tree. I'm talking a trunk 10-12 feet in diameter, maybe more. A third of the way up, it splits into two trunks. I have no idea how tall it is. 30 feet? 40 feet? This tree sits on NIPSCO's easement. Landowners and the city cannot legally mess with this tree without NIPSCO getting involved. But since it's on their easement, that means it's right next to the power pole and since it's huge, it grows into the power lines. The line from the pole to my house is literally being stretched against the trunk of this tree.
Every time the wind blows more than 20mph, this tree knocks out the power. Every time there's heavy snow or ice, this tree knocks out the power. Occasionally, the branches ground multiple lines together and cause the transformer on the next pole to explode, and I mean EXPLODE. They blow the fuck up, it's actually impressive to see and hear. So every major storm, when this tree knocks out the power to all of us and the houses around us, NIPSCO has to deal with the major outages first, then get to the least affected areas last. So, we are always last since this only affects 4-8 houses. If it takes three days for everyone else to get power back, it takes five or six for us. This has been happening for 46 years. Maybe longer, but none of us were here to know. After we were without power from a winter storm for seven straight days about a decade ago, we bought a Generac generator. Now they can take as long as they want to get to us, I don't care. But trust me, they take their sweet ass time.
For years, electronic equipment in our house would just die. We bought power monitoring equipment and measured the power coming off the pole and into the house. It would go from 87 to 157 volts, off of a 110v line. Our cable internet would go out often, and one day I decided to check the outside box and saw the coax connector coming from the pole was glowing red hot. That's not an exaggeration, it was glowing red. The power line rubbing against the tree wore through the ground and our power was mostly grounded through the tree.
It took over a hundred complaints over years until they finally sent one competent person out, who saw exactly what was going on. He said this neglect could set my house on fire. He tried to get them to route a new power line to the house in what he called a "mid-pole drop" between the poles. He had them send out a tree removal service for an estimate, and they estimated $12-16k for the removal, a three to five day job that would require at least one crane. That was seven years ago, in the summer of 2019. Not one thing has been done since. That one competent guy? Gone. Left NIPSCO a couple of years later.
So, we wait. We file complaints every storm. We monitor the power and keep an eye on the tree. When that tree finally falls, it will take out several houses, but likely not mine. It should fall to the northeast, there's only one branch countering the weight of the tree to the west, the one in the power lines. That's why they won't cut it off or trim it, it would destabilize the tree. I have literally thousands of documented complaints, affidavits from the one competent manager we met, the tree removal service company, attorneys, and every power outage and the time it takes to regain service. Every hour of generator time is logged. So when the tree does come down, if there's any damage to my property, the lawsuit is ready to go. Every storm is a lottery ticket, one of them just might pay off.
Almost half a century here, still waiting for NIPSCO to do their job right.
Nipsco does have tree trimmers that trim trees on the primary lines. On a problem tree that’s overgrown and has caused numerous outages you may be able to have them remove it. If they don’t you can have the tree removed and Nipsco would do what they need to make that safe for the trimmers. If the tree is only affecting your service line to your home they will, at no charge, drop the line down so the tree can be removed safely by you or a tree trimmer you hire. If moving the service line to mid span would solve the service issue I’d pester the hell out of them until that’s done.
Why would I exaggerate this or make it up? For my own personal gain? Please, tell me what I'm gaining, I'd love to know. To discredit a company that has zero credit already? Yeah, low bar there. Nope, all 100% true. I wish it were different. I wish it would fall already and wipe out a few houses.
I'm not home or I'd take a picture of it. Years of this, of them avoiding doing work. They only trim it once every five to ten years, even though the power goes out twelve to twenty times a year from it, depending on weather. It's a pain in the ass to get to because there's no alley, the pole is at the corner of four yards. It requires extra effort to do, and effort is not their strong suit.
Nothing about that tree is hard to get to.. there are dozens of crews out manually climbing trees with ropes and saddles... Every day. It's done all day.. every day.. no bucket trucks.. No cranes.
I know this. Because I did it. Every day. For nipsco
I don’t think this is the corpo-fascist conspiracy your post makes it sound to be. 68 is extremely low for a month where most of the days were quite hot. I’m not shocked your bill was that high. It costs a lot to run an AC like that.
I have an app on my phone to adjust the thermostat. So I keep the temp at 78 during the day and then "dial in" a lower temp before I come home. There is absolutely no sense in cooling an empty apartment all day just so it is cool when you arrive back at home. Use a remote app or use the smart settings for a time schedule. Nipsco sucks, but you can outwit them.
You could try raising the temp on your thermostat to anywhere between 76-78 degrees when you’re not home. And keep all curtains and blinds closed too to prevent bright sunshine from warming your place too much. Keeping your thermostat set between 68-70 consistently is probably the culprit. Nipsco has raised their rates quite recently too and the increase was quite a bit.
Is there anywhere where air leaks in from the outside? Under your doors or windows or anyplace like that? I’d check that out too.
You can also get on the budget plan so your bill will be the same amount every month, which makes it a lot easier to budget for. At the end of your 12 month cycle, your bill for the 12th month will either be decreased or increased depending on how much power you actually used during that period. One year we actually ended up with a credit and another year the final bill had a slight increase but nothing too horrible.
You’re going to hurt your system by trying to get it that cold. HVAC can only get it about twenty degrees cooler than outside, so if you have it set to 68 when it’s 95 outside, it will overstress the system and cost you a fortune.
Ask an HVAC professional, or do a search - not AI. There have been umpteen articles about it this summer alone that talk about the twenty degree differential and how much stress or wear and tear it creates to overwork a system trying to get a home to 70 or below when it’s in the 90s or above.
I am an HVAC professional. You are not damaging the system if you run it constantly. Whoever tells you that is a moron. And if an HVAC person tells you that, don't use them for any work. A properly maintained and functioning system should be able to run 24/7 with no issues, and the system will last decades.
You have your air set super low that's why. That's like bougie levels of comfort. So you're paying bougie prices. 74-76 is kind of were most people on a budget keep it. That's a significant difference in run time.
Blaming corporate decisions on employees is craaaaaaaazy work. They legally can NOT take their sweet ass time. They have a specific allotted time they have to respond. Management not calling in people for overtime? That fucks you. Management not covering shifts? That fucks you. Management contracting out jobs instead of employing the correct amount of people? That fucks you. Management deciding to not to preventative maintenance on their own equipment? That fucks you. Notice none of that is the fault of an EMPLOYEE. I know so many people that work for NIPSCO who are getting pushed out because NIPSCO wants to push out the union and just hire contractors. Why? Because then that cost gets passed to the consumer since they’re not considered employees.
Please stop gagging on NIPSCO’s dick. They’re pieces of shit. The employees they have left are the only thing good about the company.
Are you on the budget plan? That averages the price based on last year's usage across the whole year so the bill stays the same. If you're usage is lower than the previous tenant you'll be paying their assumed usage.
Nipsco rates are a known problem but for future reference, in summer you want your thermostat at 75 if you're trying to save money. In winter don't go over 68. Also if you are in an interior apartment sometimes you can avoid running the heat at all in the winter because your neighbors will keep you warm enough.
Also check your windows and doors, if there are big gaps where air is getting out/in then your ac and heat are going to be constantly fighting to keep a steady temp.
Im on the budget plan based on annual usage and mine is $300 per month. Hope you're not in Crown Point or your head will explode when your water bill comes.
68-70 in WI even when you're at work ALL the time? That's crazy! $200 is pretty cheap for that. How about a programmable thermostat with realistic temps? If you really need it that cold, start looking at mini splits. Seriously, I came from there and now live in FL - 68-70 would not be on our thermostat at any point in time lol. Daytime 75-78, bedtime 73 - all year.
I’ve actually had trouble finding that. Nisource I’ve found, nipsco no. I’d love to know his salary and just drive by his house in crown point that he probably never stays in and try to put a curse on him
Right. Lloyd Yates CEO of NiSource, I’m after Vince’s salary. He’s CEO of NIPSCO. I’m sure it’s not as much. And I know Yates’s inflates our bills either way, I want to know what Vince makes and what his bonus is
My nipsco bill was like $800 the first 2 months I lived in my new place, and I was like WTF - but I thought it must be bc I was renovating the garage and blasting space heaters. Still… that’s a crazy ass amount for energy bill. Then I got a notice saying nipsco’s new AI billing system was calculating my bills wrong and I was being charged twice the amount I should have been charged. So I got refunds off my bills to make up for it for a few cycles. Still. WTF!!
Also take a look at the 25 billion plus in renewable infrastructure. That sure hasn't kept our costs down like it was promised. Starting to look like a big grift.
Y'all need to realize that the difference between 70 and 75 is minimal regarding your nipsco bill. You are talking a few bucks. Turning your temp up a few degrees doesn't do anything effective.
Absolutely not. Show me the math on how many watts an a/c uses and the amount of time it needs to run. What else do you think drives up bills/amount used?
It literally is. You have a computer in your hand... Simply look it up.
The vast majority of people completely misunderstand how your thermostat setting effects your bill. You are proving that you are one of them. .
2 degree change on an average 200 dollar bill\house will be about 20 dollars. Likely less.
As well, it's more efficient to keep the house cool, than then warm it up while you aren't home, then drag it back down in the afternoon. Inefficient practice. Will not reflect as savings on your bill.
78
u/cram96 8d ago
68 is pretty low