It looks like the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) will be raising their prices in the next two years. Unfortunately, this is no small increase. They’re planning to raise rates as much as 4.75 percent in 2020, and 4.5 percent in 2021. The last time we received an increase this large was in 2010, when rates when up by 5.5 percent.
According to SMUD’s website, the increase comes from the need to make improvements for wildfire mitigation, increasing capacity to serve more customers, making upgrades to their existing systems, and investing in renewable energy systems.
After a homeowner is set up with their own heating and cooling system, what’s left? Ask them, and what most of them might say is: efficiency. It’s all about keeping those monthly HVAC costs as low as possible, and that means using the system purposefully and without waste.