Austin Energy

Here in the People's Republic, the city council has made the decision to shift toward "green energy." I've got mixed feelings on how much government, particularly city councils, should be doing on this front and particularly this city council which has a pretty lousy track record with some of their grand social engineering projects. Whatever.

Anyway, there are some aspects of the plan which offer substantial subsidies to homeowners and businesses. Tax credits which will offset up to 45% the cost of installing solar panels in some cases. They also offer free energy audits for your home. Well, I decided to take them up on that offer. Our AC broke and we were going to have to get a new one anyway and one of the choices was the super energy efficient one which was far more expensive list, but about the same after accounting for city, state, and federal tax credits. So we bought the super energy efficient one, and did some retrofits to the abode. I figured since we were staying in our house for a while it would be an ok purchase and Austin is moving toward required retrofits for houses before you can sell anyway.

I was really interested to see what our energy bills would look like. I have to say I've been really surprised. In the midst of a sweltering summer, our energy bills have dropped substantially- like 15-30% per month.