09-06-2021, 12:41 PM
Medical baseline: saving a dollar a day on electricity bill thanks to CPAP
My electricity comes from PG&E in Northern California. They have a "medical baseline" program for customers who need electricity for healthcare equipment. Mostly it's there to provide advance warning of power outages. Not a big deal for me and my CPAP. But it also contains a price break on electricity rates. It's possible other utilities in the US have similar rate plans and it might be worth signing up for them if you haven't.
PG&E has a long list of medical conditions that qualify; one of them is using a CPAP machine. Getting qualified wasn't hard. I filled out a form on PG&E's website and was given instructions to give to my doctor to verify my health condition. The doctor logged into a website and attested to my CPAP usage. And then a few weeks later I was on medical baseline. I don't love sharing health details with my electricity company but, well, here we are.
The savings amounts to about a dollar a day. I'm on the older E1 PM Residential rate plan; I pay by tier. Medical baseline gives me an extra 16.4 kWh/day that qualifies for the cheaper Tier 1 rate. The tier price difference is about $0.07, so I'm saving just about $1.10 / day assuming I use up all that allotment. Note that a CPAP machine uses well under 1 kWh/day so this allowance is overly generous for this usage.
These note are all PG&E specific but I bet other utilities do something similar. There was an older discussion on this topic that includes some comments on other electricity companies.
PG&E has a long list of medical conditions that qualify; one of them is using a CPAP machine. Getting qualified wasn't hard. I filled out a form on PG&E's website and was given instructions to give to my doctor to verify my health condition. The doctor logged into a website and attested to my CPAP usage. And then a few weeks later I was on medical baseline. I don't love sharing health details with my electricity company but, well, here we are.
The savings amounts to about a dollar a day. I'm on the older E1 PM Residential rate plan; I pay by tier. Medical baseline gives me an extra 16.4 kWh/day that qualifies for the cheaper Tier 1 rate. The tier price difference is about $0.07, so I'm saving just about $1.10 / day assuming I use up all that allotment. Note that a CPAP machine uses well under 1 kWh/day so this allowance is overly generous for this usage.
These note are all PG&E specific but I bet other utilities do something similar. There was an older discussion on this topic that includes some comments on other electricity companies.
