I’m going to start this post by saying that there is no easy way to understand all the factors that influence the retail natural gas prices we pay in Westchester County, New York. In White Plains, NY, I pay $2.66/therm, with about 2/3rd of this going to delivering gas, not to gas supply costs.
My first question is what’s a therm? Thankfully, the Internet tells me a therm is equal to 100,000 BTUs, 29 Kilowatt Hours, or 100 Cubic Feet of Gas (CCF). This info is handy as my ConEd bill shows my gas usage in two units – CCF and Therms, as can be seen in the excerpt from my gas bill below.
I used 104 CCF this month and ConEd provides a conversion rate to convert from CCF to Therms. In this case, the conversion rate is 1.025. There are a ton of explanations about this conversion, check out what this random web site says about the conversion rate, or this random web site. Both come to different solutions for conversion rates, so it’s good to see what ConEd is using.
My gas supply rate has been fairly unstable over the past few years, but has been falling since the beginning of 2023. Of course, gas supply will increase as winter cools down, but hopefully the gas supply cost doesn’t double, as in Feb 2023. But while gas supply has been falling, gas delivery has been increasing.
My gas supply rate has been fairly unstable over the past few years, but has been falling since the beginning of 2023. Of course, gas supply will increase as winter cools down, but hopefully the gas supply cost doesn’t double, as in Feb 2023.
My gas supply rate has been fairly unstable over the past few years, but has been falling since the beginning of 2023. Of course, gas supply will increase as winter cools down, but hopefully the gas supply cost doesn’t double, as in Feb 2023.
Am I paying a high natural gas rate?
One of the places to find out where my gas rate sits im relation to rest of the USA is the US Energy Information Administration. U.S. Energy Information Administration – EIA – Independent Statistics and Analysis. The EIA is most likely not a federal agency you’ve heard of but there’s some mega cool information there if you are interested in energy infrastructure.
It takes some digging to find exactly what you need here, but this report provides the average retail cost projection by region. From here, I see that in November 23, the average retail gas price is expected to be about $13/thousand cubic fee or $1.30 per CCF. In this case, the answer clearly is YES. At $2.39/therm I am paying double the projected retail natural gas price that EIA predicted in my area. Can I do anything about this? Nope.
I took a look at the gas supply costs from Maryland, where consumers can choose a gas supplier. Looking at Constellation Energy’s site, they are offering 55.9c/Therm, which is similar to the .53c/Therm I pay in White Plains, NY. So clearly, my energy supply costs aren’t too high here, it’s my delivery costs that drive my gas rates.
New York doesn’t allow me to choose my gas supplier and my gas delivery is tied to ConEd. My gas rate is controlled by the NY Public Service Commission as outlined in previous posts. We can kind of see the raw rate information in this ConEd link, but only vaguely in the second link on the page called . I am gas Service Class 1, in https://lite.coned.com/_external/cerates/documents/allrates.pdf
In future posts I’m going to deep-dive on how our gas rate is constructed from the ConEd and NY PSC filings, but not now!
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