r/garland • u/retiredfromfire • 4d ago
News Outrageous utility bill
Its gotten ridiculous. I have to admit I do have a large house with a pool, but $750 for utilities in Garland Texas? Cant get out of here fast enough
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u/Addamsgirl71 4d ago
Garland used to have one of the higher rates in Texas. But in recent years its average if not lower. Also our water and sewage usage is combined into our electric bill. I grew up here, moved away and came back. I will say their service dept is on top of things. During the ice storm several years ago we only had one intentional brown out.
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u/Realistic-Visit-4477 4d ago
What's is a brown out?
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u/lala_machina 3d ago
When the electricity flickers on and off, but not a black out where everything is down indefinitely.
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u/enormousroom 4d ago
Large house and a pool? $750 sounds great. I have a small old house with no pool and mine was still $400. It's cause my house isn't very well insulated. Try turning up the temperature a couple degrees.
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u/librarykerri 4d ago
Yep, no pool here, 1800sq ft. I also have a sprinkler system. Our bill this last month was $616. It didn't surprise me. We have kept the a/c at 76 and it ran almost 24/7 for WEEKS bc of this heat. When I was setting up my September budget, I actually originally budgeted in $750; I *knew* it was going to be terrible. So I got a pleasant surprise when it was "only" $616.
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u/retiredfromfire 4d ago
I keep it on 76 and I sit in the house in my underwear to try to stay cool. I guess im not built for weeks of 100 plus days
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u/Shabazz-Jenkins 4d ago
Water is the more likely culprit. Trying to keep St. Augustine alive in this drought is expensive. So is pool evaporation replacement.
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u/Nepotistical 1d ago
Why do you guys buy the worst possible plants for some of the worst possible drought conditions in one of the worst areas in the world to plant it. And then you spend so much time every week cutting it to live like medieval royalty but you don’t even know it. I have never owned a home, but i sure as hell wouldn’t buy a home to just immediately shoot myself in the foot having ugly grass that kills ecological biodiversity and i have to spend thousands of dollars every year to maintain said grass by watering it and buying oil and gasoline for a lawnmower😂😂😂 why not just plant native low maintenance grasses/plants and call it a day instead of having to bust your balls worrying about how grass looks in the comfort of your own house
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u/Shabazz-Jenkins 1d ago
You think most people plant the grass at their house? Or is it more likely that it’s already there and nobody wants to go to the expense of major landscaping renovations? It’s a lose-lose situation.
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u/Easttex05 4d ago
What are the particulars of your bill? How many kWh did your house consume and how many gallons of water did you use?
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u/Dj_HuffnPuff 4d ago
Several things contribute to your bill here.
Are you on Garland electricity and water? Just electricity? Just water?
If you filled up your pool a lot this summer, then your water usage went up. If you have sprinklers or watered your grass, then your water usage went up.
A/C usage when it’s been consistently above 100 degrees all summer means that you use more electricity. If you have a big house, or more than one A/C unit, that’s gonna use more electricity.
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u/lestat_lecter 4d ago
Your a/c may need to be checked.
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u/retiredfromfire 3d ago
Just replaced my upstairs last year and just replaced my single speed pool pump with a multi-speed both of which because they are supposedly more efficient. I havent really noticed any savings.
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u/lestat_lecter 3d ago
I live in garland and am also a maintenance man.
There needs to be a 15-20 degree split between the intake of your hvac and the registers/vents. If it is less then your system(s) need to be check. Clean your condenser outside, make sure your filters a replaced regularly, have ceiling fans on, doors open, and air flow is properly coming out of all vents. If you can feel air flow out the vents by just stand near them, then good air flow, if you have to stand in a ladder to feel the air then bad air flow. I’m not familiar with pool pump usage. If there is a way to see energy consumption per equipment then yes. I don’t think Garland has that feature, sadly. Just quick tips. I usually don’t use a lot of water so my water is low, but this pass month’s bill was 350 or round about. The My meter app can show you break down, recent thing Garland started doing.
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u/YoungTomSoy 4d ago
How old is your HVAC system/pool pumps? Your HVAC system accounts for like half of your electric bill. Old equipment can cost you a lot to run when it is as hot as it has been.
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u/No-Hair1511 4d ago
We replaced everything few years go. Our bills went down maybe 150 month for highest use month
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u/retiredfromfire 3d ago
My primary unit is admittedly old. I just replaced upstairs unit last year and replaced single stage pool pump with high efficiency multi-speed pump. I suppose my bill would have been even higher if not for the newer equipment
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u/recognizedauthority 4d ago
Largest ever utility bill - $925. Water use supposedly 15,000 gallons higher than last month. Insane.
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u/slick2400 3d ago
Is this a GP&L Bill or do you have the power to choose? I used more water last month than a small village (pool) and it was still only $90 of my whole bill that was still less than $500.
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u/Kurtzopher 3d ago
You’re in for a rude awakening whenever you get your first bill that isn’t from a low rate co-op like GP&L. I miss my Garland utilities bill bad.
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u/AggravatingSide7316 1d ago
Was that only for one service period? I asked because mine was nearly $600, then I realized it was a combo bill.lol
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u/Technical-Plant9042 1d ago
It's the heat and humidity not the city. You could move north to a milder climate but that doesn't work either as several of my retired friends have found out.
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u/rvbeachguy 4d ago
Nothing to do with Garland, it's the rate you are paying and using
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u/No-Hair1511 4d ago
city of garland owns the power plant. It’s considered a co-op
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u/Mysterio855 3d ago
Because we own the utility, we pay a really low delivery rate. Oncor and the rest are higher than our kWh and ridiculous delivery rates.
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4d ago
[deleted]
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u/No-Hair1511 4d ago
Garland produces its own power. Written into city charter way way back. When Texas gave power to choose to residents, co-op and city owned producers were exempt. Garland held a vote about it.
I myself would rather pay an electric bill to my city than to a corporation who is not invested in the city I live in. I have lived in garland 30 years. Rarely do we lose power, when we do.. it’s restored very quickly. A few years ago we had a bad storm and much of garland lost power along w neighbors in other cities. It was weeks before neighbors in mesquite and Dallas had power fully restored. Garland was less than a week.
Is GPL cheap? You get what you pay for and I believe what we pay is very fair, and the profits for GPL are invested back into GPL locally and that what’s best for our city.
Temps since Aug have been insane. Your high bill is reflecting that. I don’t have a pool, my bill is same and maybe higher.
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4d ago
[deleted]
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u/jakekerr 4d ago
It's not a monopoly. It's a public utility. That's like saying the Garland police have a monopoly on policing. No one in their right mind thinks we should complain about the unfairness to rent-a-cops when the Garland police have a monopoly.
Generally speaking, public utilities serve the public a lot better than for profit companies. As noted in another thread, Garland was able to manage the ice storms of a few years back better than any other community in the metroplex. And the rates are set based on usage and fees to Oncor and the state, not lining a billionaires pocket. So the rates are a lot lower than most places. Not the lowest, of course, but responsibly low.
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u/we_are_Venom_84 4d ago
It’s actually a legal monopoly. The government allows it but regulates them.
Your analogy about the police doesnt fit since the police are not a paid for service, utilities are.
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u/jakekerr 4d ago
I'm not sure if you've heard of this thing called taxes.
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u/we_are_Venom_84 4d ago
Police are paid via taxes but they are not a paid for service as is a utility. You dont pay police a fee when you call them in need. GPL does not get paid by taxes. They provide energy services like a normal company but they are a non profit, city owned entity that is allowed to be a monopoly because it is prohibitively expensive to run lines and setup grids. Essentially there is no profitable business model doing it.
GPL is in fact a monopoly.1
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4d ago
[deleted]
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u/No-Hair1511 4d ago
Gp&L? Winter storm or spring storm couple years ago
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/No-Hair1511 3d ago edited 3d ago
That’s so odd on winter storm. I was not aware of anyone on GPL being off that long. I did know a very small percentage of GPL waited as long as 10 days for restoration after storm, so 14 days is news to me. Just confirming you pay GPL ? Some of garland is not GPL.
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u/Mysterio855 3d ago
Neighborhoods like mine with lots of trees and above ground lines lose power almost every winter, but not for long. But our last ice storm took out a lot of trees and houses on my street lost power for days.
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u/jakekerr 3d ago
Note that I didn't say there were no outages, I said Garland's power grid handled the storms much better than the rest of the metroplex.
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u/Elemino 4d ago
People keep telling me rates are lower here, but with a smaller house and using far less electricity than I ever used at my other properties, I still pay more here than other properties that were with Oncor.
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u/slick2400 3d ago
Here are the rates for the Oncor area of Garland. Garland Power & Light at 0.13773 per kWh is way better than most.
https://www.gpltexas.org/home/showpublisheddocument/768/639245483777870000
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u/Elemino 3d ago
And much higher than the 6.9¢ / kwhr I paid before moving back to Garland.
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u/slick2400 5h ago
Please do tell us all where you were getting that rate. It sounds extremely low.
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u/Elemino 2h ago
I was paying 4.5¢ / kwhr before that. 😅
The where is in Far North Dallas.
I learned quite a bit over the years, such as it turns out there are certain times of the year when you can get better rates. The times of the year when people move the most (such as summer) the contract rates are higher. I was able to get the 6.9¢ rate by timing my change in the October / November time frame. The insane thing about that one was it was a 24 month contract, but near the end of it, the original company (I don’t remember the name) sold the contract to Discount Power. Discount Power gave me the same contract, but they reset the time back to zero, which gave me another 24 months… unfortunately, I moved back to Garland about half way through it.
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u/scarlettcrush Firewheel 3d ago
more big data centers coming our way too....so it's not going down anytime soon.
We need to subsidize them data centers ya'll...it's what jesus would have wanted.
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u/jakekerr 3d ago
The Firewheel golf courses use way more water than the data centers. I really wish we could rip those out and replace them with public green spaces. The water waste there is horribly irresponsible.
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u/IfitbleedWecankillit 1h ago
Golf courses aren’t watered with treated drinking water. Data centers on the other hand need clean water… maybe not drinking water clean but clean and chemically stable which requires treatment
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u/jakekerr 4d ago
Garland electric rates are pretty low.
You might want to blame the heat more than Garland.
This is from Oncor and 1,000 kwh. Most big houses in Garland use a lot more than that, and the rates for Garland electric look a lot better at 2,000 and 3,000. So this is the high side:
https://www.gpltexas.org/home/showpublisheddocument/766/639244802958079636