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Comment by JulianWasTaken | Hacker News Reader

I have my electricity bills tracking into a KWH commodity. It has been... effectively useless :D.

I track my propane in an LPG commodity at a fixed price per season. It saved me about $100 once when a transaction wouldn’t balance. I was accidentally partially charged for a short load delivery on one of my tanks at almost double the rate. Even if it seems silly to track at this fidelity in the moment, I wouldn’t have caught this tracking USD alone. Billing mistakes happen and can be costly!

Nice! That sounds really useful; in my case the KWH usage (and price/KWH) I pull directly out of the ConEd bill, so my only chance to notice those sorts of things would be post hoc looking back in time for big jumps in rate or usage I think.

But good to hear the positive story side for this.

You may be able to convert it to CO2 emissions to track your impact :) but for that you'd also need to track how those kWh of electricity were produced ^^

Ooh hmm that's an interesting idea. I have wanted a reason to buy an Emporia Vue or something like that.

How do you do this? I am just getting into hledger and am curious about tracking this kind of stuff to see how much we would really save with a different electric supplier.

In my case (with beancount) an example transaction looks like:

  2025-12-04 * "CON ED OF NY CECONY 251203~ Tran: ACHDW"
    Assets:Schwab:Checking                                                                       -72.33 USD
    Expenses:Utilities:Electric:Supply:Rate                                                      143.00 KWH @@ 18.06 USD ; Supply 143.00 kWh @12.629¢/kWh
    Expenses:Utilities:Electric:Supply:Fees                                                        0.68 USD             ; Supply Merchant Function Charge
    Expenses:Taxes:Other                                                                           0.45 USD             ; Supply GRT & other tax surcharges
    Expenses:Taxes:Sales                                                                           0.86 USD             ; Supply Sales tax @4.5%
    Expenses:Utilities:Electric:Delivery:Service                                                  21.95 USD             ; Delivery Basic service charge
    Expenses:Utilities:Electric:Delivery:Rate                                                    143.00 KWH @@ 25.08 USD ; Delivery 143.00 kWh @17.539¢/kWh
    Expenses:Utilities:Electric:Delivery:Fees:Benefit                                            143.00 KWH @@ 0.71 USD ; Delivery System Benefit Charge @0.497¢/kWh
    Expenses:Taxes:Other                                                                           2.29 USD            ; Delivery GRT & other tax surcharges
    Expenses:Taxes:Sales                                                                           2.25 USD            ; Delivery Sales tax @4.5%

which I extract from the PDF bill I get from them.

Thanks! This gives me a base to start from.

I struggle with tracking the actual cost of my energy usage between changing electric rates, the various solar costs, SRECs, different loans and credits and incentives to be able to make an intelligent decision on what the benefit or cost is of cutting an appliance or adding something new. It’s a lot.

It is a lot.

And when it’s fragile even when working. The cost per unit changes with limited notice in various ways (line rate, unit cost, time period that various rates occur, the day, ‘free’ power bonuses etc).

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