Sonoma County residents shiver over cold-driven heat bill hikes

December’s cold weather first made folks shiver. Now it’s making them wince.

The frosty days are prompting higher energy bills for many Sonoma County residents. The bigger bills often cause puzzlement and consternation, even among those who expected an increase.

Don and Helen Young of Santa Rosa say they keep their Oakmont neighborhood home at 65 degrees or lower, staying warm with extra sweaters or jackets. Even so, their combined gas and electric bill from Pacific Gas & Electric last month was $329.

“Two days later we phoned them, ‘Hey, what’s going on here?’” Don Young said of his conversation with PG&E about the bill. “They couldn’t explain it.”

Part of the bafflement, residents said, is that over the course of a year, few basic expenses rise and fall as much as energy bills.

When it comes to changes in expenses, “There’s nothing else in my life that is so dramatic,” said Nicole Reyes of Petaluma.

Reyes’ gas and electric bill for the 30-day period ending Dec. 21 was $431, compared to $224 for the previous month’s bill.

For Reyes, the bump in energy use remains “a big mystery.” The family is “mostly gone during the day,” she said, at which time the heater stays off.

A number of area residents reported their heating bills rose markedly last month. Some said they responded to the cold weather by using extra blankets and sweaters to keep their energy use down. A few said they couldn’t wait until spring.

The increased bills are mostly due to a jump in energy consumption, not a jump in rates, according to PG&E, the region’s natural gas provider and one of its electricity suppliers.

The utility last summer won state approval for a gas rate increase that amounts to an average of $7 a month when calculated on an annualized basis.

Customers’ bills “remain well below the national average,” PG&E spokeswoman Deanna Contreras said in an email.

December may have felt colder than usual, but it appears to have been about average in terms of temperature.

The 24-hour average daily temperature last month was 45.8 degrees, compared to a historical average for December of 46.4 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.

Ken Clark, a meteorologist with AccuWeather, said such a difference is too small to be significant. He suggested that perhaps the large number of cloudy and rainy days last month shrouded the sun and kept its energy from warming houses here as much as in recent winters during the drought years.

“It may feel somewhat chillier because we’ve had a fair amount of rainfall,” Clark said, and overcast skies.

December did end with a prolonged cold spell. Thirteen of the last 15 days in Santa Rosa recorded a low temperature somewhere below freezing. That prompted Kathy Johnson of Healdsburg to respond that it wasn’t the most recent energy bill for $103 that worries her. It’s the next one.

“My heater has been running almost nonstop the past two to three weeks and I’m dreading that bill!” she said in an email earlier this month.

The cold weather and big bills did push Spencer Humphrey to fix the propane-fired radiant heating system that normally pushes hot water through tubes in the floor of his home in the hills east of Rohnert Park. The home’s walls are made of rammed earth and require relatively constant heat inside in order for the structure to modulate the cold outside, he said. While the system was down, he heated with electricity.

Humphrey received a bill in late December for $684.58, most of it for running space heaters. With the regular propane heating system back in operation, he expects to see a sharp reduction in his electric bill.

“The worse the cold, the more I’m going to save using propane rather than electricity,” he said.

Most county residents heat their homes with natural gas, a more economical method than electricity.

Ken Young said his Oakmont home is about 2,100 square feet in size, with good insulation and double-paned windows. Some of his neighbors in similar homes keep their residences much warmer, he said, and have complained of higher bills, in the range of $400 to $600.

Despite their concerns, most acknowledged we live in a relatively temperate region, where even those with air conditioners seldom need to run the units in summer. Similarly, our cold weather doesn’t compare with more frigid parts of the U.S.

Reyes said her two-story home is less than a decade old and should be relatively energy efficient. She knows some people keep their thermostats way down in winter in order to rack up lower bills. But when she’s home, she typically keeps the heat around 68 degrees.

“I’d rather pay money and be warm,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 707-521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit