NSTAR heating costs going up?

[moireach.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming I'm far from the only person whose heat is provided by NSTAR natural gas. I'm hoping someone can help me understand why prices are up this winter over last:

The useful little comparison chart on the back of my current bill shows that natural gas prices per therm were $1.24 this January, as opposed to 97.9 cents in January 2008. I'd assumed that the plummet in oil prices would be driving down energy costs in general, and some very cursory googling seems to show a big drop (~50%) in natural gas costs over the past year, too. Is this something NSTAR can decide arbitrarily, or is this the actual legitimate cost to them? (I get suspicious, because of things like airlines still charging fuel surcharges, despite the huge drop in fuel costs, etc.) If it is something they can set, has anyone had any luck trying to talk them into a lower rate, a la cable companies?

It's frustrating that even with NSTAR's delivery charges down, and with pretty strenuous attempts on our part to keep heating costs down (we have a timer on the thermostat, vacuum-insulated windows, have blocked off rooms, used plastic window seal, keep the heat low, etc etc), the bills keep going up.

Comments

[moireach.livejournal.com]

(We keep it at 68 when someone is home, and it's still really cold, like, wear-a-hat-and-two-sweaters cold.)

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Have you checked to make sure it really is 68 everywhere in the house and that this is not just what the thermostat says? Those things are sometimes grossly inaccurate. Even in the case of digital thermostats I've heard of them being off by sometimes as much as 5 degrees.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Also, have you checked to see if the furnace is just running constantly? It may be that it's out of adjustment and/or just totally inefficient. Even if it is running constantly, it might still be a furnace efficiency problem. I contacted my landlord over the summer because I noticed that even when we'd had the heat off consistently for several months, the gas bill was still ~$60. Come to find out that the pilot light was just way out of adjustment (it was even running hot enough to make the water in the baseboard pipes warm constantly!)