Dear Mountain Community,
Husband Ed and I are wondering if we are alone in being gob-smacked by PGE’s billing statements for February 2025? We have a tiny, one bedroom house in Brightwood we have lived in part-time for the past 15 years, and before that for 15 years part-time in a Forest Service cabin off Road 20D in Rhododendron.
Despite only being at the Brightwood house for six days in February and that we always turn our electric furnace down to 55 degrees when away, our electrical usage and bill were more than 50 percent higher in February than in January, at least according to PGE. This despite the fact we were there 12 days in January.
We borrowed money to completely remodel this house 15 years ago. At that time we spent several thousand dollars on a new electric furnace. The house was in terrible shape with the owners long gone. We spent another chunk of money at that time on a larger and more efficient wood stove. We have lived to regret at age 87 (Ed) and 80 (me), our decision to install an electric furnace, even as a back-up heating system. We have always burned wood as our main source of heat whenever we are here.
It’s been an expensive year. Last fall we had to replace our septic system. By the time we met all the County permitting requirements for living along a creek, a $45,000 hole had been blown in our rapidly depleting retirement account.
We phoned PGE about the more than 50 percent jump in our already outrageously high electric bills, thinking the meter reader must have made a mistake. This is when we learned there are no field meter readers — the usage is tracked by computer and “read” at PGE headquarters for every house up here. PGE stood by its reading. We asked for an in-person recheck anyway.
In all our years living on the Mountain we have never experienced such an exorbitant utility bill of any kind and we wondered if anyone else was as shocked as we were when they opened their February PGE statement? We have heard from a local electrician that he’d been told by several people in the Welches area that they’d experienced a huge spike in their electrical bill for February.
We are considering reaching out to the Oregon Public Utilities Commission to file a complaint and wondered if other residents — whether full or part-time — are considering doing so as well.
We understand and acknowledge our privilege to be calling ourselves even part-time residents. This zap from PGE, however, feels like an ohm too far.