Enmax
 

With rates expected to soar, what do you think of the fixed rate plans now being offered by Enmax ? Too risky, or a good option?

Whats an Enmax ?

and what rates are expected to soar?

Steve

Enmax: Energy company in Alberta.
Soaring: The cost of natural gas.
Absurd: Deregulation so a few elites can make money at the expense of small business and home owners.

Enmax runs my halides for dollars a day :rolleyes: .....the lock in rates are at roughly $0.07.

IMHO prices of both natural gas and oil/gasoline will rise relentlessly in the long term.

There is a fixed supply of oil and natural gas in the world, perhaps 70 years worth. There is an increasing consumption of oil and natural gas as nations like China become more developed.

We can explore and develop more areas, such as off the B.C. north coast. This will buy some more time but the end result will be the same. As areas become more and more expensive to explore and drill, and as the world demand for oil and gas continues to increase, there is only one direction prices will go -- up.

We consumers have been spoiled by low energy prices over the years. That will change in the future.

A fixed-price plan by your Alberta gas company may even out the bumps in price but in the end the company wouldn't offer this plan if they didn't intend to make money on it.

My approach to dealing with this problem is

1. Invest in oil and gas companies.

2. We had better be prepared to accept and pay for new technologies which minimize hydrocarbon fuel use.

With deregulation, more companys are coming to Alberta to compete for your enery dollar. An article in the Calgary Herald today suggests waiting until all the players are in the game.

The prices do not reflect competition at this time. So you will get the price swings with the market changes. On the whole you might find that your enery dollars averaged over the whole year will probably equal out to what you would pay on a current fixed contract.

A better solution is to look at "green" alternatives. Wait for the Federal gov't to anti up for their part of Kyoto and get grants to modernize your home.

Another way to go would be to get a co-generation furnace. This uses natural gas to run a small turbine engine that can generate up to a 175 kilowatts electricty. The exhaust is use to heat a boiler to heat your home. The excess energy could be used to light your fish tank or sold back onto the electical grid.

Take a look - I want one.

http://www.mariahpower.com/

I am interested in the method of home heating/cooling that uses a fluid pumped through a pipe into the ground, then recirculated through a kind of heat exchanger into your home.

I forget what these are called, I believe they have a significant start-up cost but then the operating cost is pennies per day.

geothermal heat pumps.


ok who here has natural gas and can figure out the cost for 10 days to run
440 000 kJ/h (420 000 Btu/h) worth of gas.

Steve

I was mixing my compost bin tonight and it was giving off ALOT of heat!
I was extremely suprised. Maybe a few huge compost bin's in the back yard to heat the house and tank :eek:

I do like your idea's/explanation's Kim. I don't know a whole bunch about the topic so I don't have much to contribute. I am kina a sucker for saftey Deb so If I was offered a secure rate plan for like 5 year's then I probably would take it.

It seems to me it was 11 cents per Kj a while ago. I just don't know what to do. It is about 5 ish now. I think I might do it. At least I will know how much I pay each month... :confused:

If you think about it.. why would a company give you a secure rate plan if they felt rates would go up? kinda cutting there own throats. I think what you will find is that when a couple more companies come on line rates will drop by a cent or two. especily if they let companies like BC hydro get in on the game. that rate is not that bad.. I pay 5.5cent /KWh and we have some of the cheepest hydro around.

Steve

So how can I translate 5.5 cents per kilowatt-hour into a monthly hydro bill for a tank with 220 watts of lighting on 12 hours per day?

220W for 12 hours is 220*12 = 2640Wh or 2.64kWh.

2.64kWh * $0.055 = $0.145 per day

Thus, approximately $4.30 per month for your lights.

But that's assuming your 220W of light are only drawing 220W out the wall. I'm no EE or electrician so I can only offer simplistic explanations, but some of that energy is lost to heat, some of that energy is lost to resistance in the wiring, etc.

Ultimately, part of me wants to agree with the sentiment that these fixed-rate terms wouldn't be offered if the company didn't expect to make a profit off them. The one real hesitation of mine, is that the terms are things like 5 years. It's a gamble on the part of both the consumer and the energy companies; the consumer is expecting rates to rise and thus wants to lock in; the energy companies must thus be not expecting rate to rise over a 5 year period.

But part of me is looking at my >$200 monthly utilities bill, and then hearing the analysts say how reserves are low and thus prices are expected to rise or even double in the fall (timing to corresponding to the increase in demand), and then saying "oh, crap, I can't afford to keep this hobby up, at the level I'm currently doing so."

I don't know what to do ... frankly I'm scared to lock myself into a 5-year plan because I'm sure it wouldn't be offered to me, if the company didn't intend to make money off the deal, but those projected rates are a cause for concern for me..

On the other hand, when Epcor first came to town, I looked into the terms they were offering for THEIR fixed rates plans .... and I am sooo glad I didn't take that, because the rates fell shortly afterwards, quite significantly...

Jonathan- your compost pile is heating up because the stuff in there slowly starts to oxidize. The grass and other stuff in there is good insulation so the heat does not escape quickly.

As for energy prices- hopefully they will stabilize in the short term. Us Canadians have to pay more now because recently more pipeline capacity was added to transport gas to the States, so now prices have equalized at what they pay. The only worrying thing is that during the year cycle, gas prices (and therefore electricity in a lot of places) should be at the low point right now and they're not since not much gas is getting into storage. Longer term- we're running out of juice in North America, so prices will go up until another source is found.