As of today, our electricity contract changes and instead of the fixed price we had, we are now moving to transport cost plus "market prices". The change is quite extreme to say the least and as we are living in a large house in a cold country, heating costs are going to be the killer.
There is an app we are now using to track the current prices and at around 2pm each day, it will update the prices for the following day. While you probably don't speak Finnish,
The first image is today (Sunday) the second is for tomorrow.
As you can see, the prices today were great! Actually slightly cheaper than our contract was and as such, we did all of the washing we could during the morning. However, tomorrow the market prices change drastically.
Highest price moves up from 5.97 to 19.22 c/kWh, which is a 320% increase in price. But it is the average that is really the kicker, since the change in that from 1,87 to 13,18 is a 704% increase in cost and this means that all of the appliances like fridge and freezer that have to stay on, will be increasing our electricity bills by 7x for the fixed electricity costs.
Who knows what it will be on Tuesday.
For example, our freezer uses around about 1kWh per day and that means that right now, for the most expensive hour for this day, it is costing 2 cents per hour, but tomorrow it is going to cost 13 cents per hour.
So today it was 48 cents, tomorrow it is going to be €3,12. The difference in the cost over the space of the month takes the freezer from around 15€ a month to 93€ a month all things remaining equal, which they won't - they will be higher. As I was talking with my wife, while we can affect what we use during the peaks and the troughs, when it comes to these fixed costs, the averages are the real thing to keep an eye on, and there is nothing we can really do about it - we are held over a barrel.
All of our lights are LED so they do not burn too much electricity in the grand scheme of things, but they do add up over time and one of the things that we are quite used to is not only turning them off, but also having them dimmed, which means they don't use nearly as much as when they are on full and, they last longer. But still, a lot of houses are going to have darkened windows this winter, including ours. A 700% increase from our current electricity costs is going to make an enormous impact on our financial situation in the short term and while there will be some possible rebates available to lessen tax liability, that won't have an effect on us now, it will impact next year.
After speaking with friends over the last few weeks, what has been interesting to note is that it has somewhat become a gamified experience, where these apps and the game of finding ways to save electricity has become the norm. This reminds me of when a friend bought a Toyota Prius and enjoyed seeing how low he could get the consumption under different conditions by driving alternative routes and speeds. It has become "fun" and people like my wife are enjoying the process and drama of it, even though no one wants to be negatively impacted financially.
This is something I was also talking about with my wife a few minutes ago. People are incentivized to act to mitigate the risks when there is a cost and in something like the rising price of electricity, people have jumped to and dived into the fray and changed behaviors very quickly. But, the same people have not acted on the incentive for gain. If they had changed their behaviors to be incentivized to making money instead of saving money, they would have far less stress when things like rising electricity prices impacted on them.
I am in between this space at the moment, as while I have definitely been working toward having multiple revenue streams to insulate against these kinds of events, the last few years have also been impacted financially through both the renovation of an old house and perhaps more profoundly, my own health issues which greatly reduced my monthly income for a very long period and it still hasn't fully recovered.
What I wonder for going into the future though, is whether this kind of change in people's lives where they have gamified their financial outcomes through the usage of apps to save money, will impact on their willingness to do the same in order to make money too. We on Hive and in crypto in general are no strangers to this and investors might be getting more used to doing it on the retail apps now, but Web3 is going to introduce far more options to make money though gaming, content creation and on Hive, curating content too. If people enjoy saving money, wouldn't they enjoy making money more?
Eventually - The lights will go on.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
