Jan. 28 Report: The High Cost of Keeping Warm

        Natural gas prices are at historic highs, and Tristate heating bills are, too. Here are answers to some questions you've been asking in response to our Jan. 28 report: The High Cost of Keeping Warm.

        Question: According to the newspaper, Cinergy Corp. made a profit of $92 million in the fourth quarter of last year. If this is not from doubling and tripling our home heating bills, where is this profit coming from?

        Answer: Some — but not all — of Cinergy's higher fourth-quarter earnings came from the delivery charges on the gas it provides. Cinergy isn't allowed by law to make a profit on the cost of gas it supplies to customers, but it is permitted to make a profit on the cost of providing gas service to customers' homes as part of what's called the base rate.

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Send us your questions about energy bills and conservation, and we'll ask the experts. Use the convenient e-mail form at Cincinnati.com. Or:     Mail to Betty Barnett, Enquirer reader representative, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati, OH 45202.     Call (513) 768-8299 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.     Please include your name and phone number.

        The base rate is listed on customer bills in terms of cents per hundred cubic feet of gas supplied. But as the amount of gas delivered increases because of colder weather, so does the amount of the base rate.

        Cinergy says the base rate represents 20 percent to 30 percent of the total bill and has averaged about $50 a month in winter for the typical residential customer over most of the last decade. The balance of the bill is the cost of the gas.

        Not all of Cinergy's increased earnings in the fourth quarter were because of higher sales to residential and commercial customers. The utility also makes money by supplying electricity and gas on a wholesale basis to industrial customers and other large users. Cinergy said its regulated revenues — those from residential and small commercial customers — increased 48.6 percent in the fourth quarter to $1.6 billion. At the same time, its revenues from nonregulated wholesale customers increased nearly 200 percent to $1.1 billion.

        Q. I've been reading about the high cost of gas heating, but I have electric heat, and my energy bill still doubled in December and more than doubled in January. How could this happen? Could my electric usage actually have doubled?

        A. Yes, says CG&E, and you can largely blame it on the weath er. In the Greater Cincinnati area, November and December were 41 percent colder than normal. With colder weather, all types of heating equipment — gas and electric — runs more.

        Besides the weather, other factors can affect electric bills. For example, how well-insulated is the home? And what type and how old is the electric heating system?

        Older, less efficient electric baseboard heating along the outside walls of a dwelling with little insulation could consume a significant amount of electricity with the colder winter, CG&E says. Turning down the thermostat at night and when the home is unoccupied, or using a programmable unit that does this automatically, can reduce electric consumption, CG&E says.

        It's not just space heating that drives up electric bills. CG&E says water heaters in many homes are the second-largest energy consumers after the heating system.

        Q: I read in the newspaper that marble windowsills attract the cold. We have replacement windows already, but is there anything we can do about the windowsills?

        A: Many Tristate homes built after World War II with aluminium casement windows included marble sills. In most cases, the marble is in contact with the aluminum that conducts the cold outside into the house, says Tim Carter, a former builder who writes a nationally syndicated column on building and remodeling.

        Even though many homeowners have replaced their leaky aluminum windows, the marble sills remain. Mr. Carter says the cost of ripping out and replacing the sills far exceeds any possible energy savings.

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