Photo: E+
Yesterday was quite a shock in the Conway household when I opened my power bill.
I have been in Iowa for almost 11 years now and this was by far the largest such bill I have received in all that time.
Has it been cold? Yes it has, but we have had colder and so I looked closely.
Compared to the same month last year I actually used slightly LESS electricity and an almost identical amount of gas and so what is this?
Back in October of last year, MidAmerican Energy warned us that prices were going to go up. "They're going to be in the neighborhood of around 50% to nearly 100% higher than they were last year," Geoff Greenwood from the power company said at the time. "Fast forward to this year, plants are open, businesses are open. There's a lot more natural gas demand. So with that, we're also exporting a lot of natural gas to other countries and the supply and storage aren't quite keeping pace with the increased demand." And of course none of that takes inflation into account.
This takes us to the big question. Can you afford to pay the bill?