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Still, her monthly propane bill rose from $200 to $400 to $600.
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The dance was maddening.
“(Last) winter was horrible, and it wasn’t even that cold,” the 22-year-old said. “I realize I live in a trailer. I realize it doesn’t have the greatest insulation. But I pay more for this than my parents pay for a three-story house.”
She and her father crawled underneath adding insulation, and she planned to later add weather stripping and tape her windows.
“I’m going to basically wrap my whole place in Saran Wrap,” she mused late in the summer.
But as cold weather months approached, Pahl decided not to stick around and find out what this winter has in store. Last week she sold her home.
“I know this winter would just kill me,” Pahl said. “I knew I would not be able to handle it by myself.”
All Wisconsin residents will be paying more to heat their homes this year, but propane and heating oil customers will be hit especially hard.
Without the cover of government intervention, they are at the mercy of the free market and lack a cold weather rule keeping them warm if the tank runs dry.
The only relief for those customers is to buy early and buy in bulk, a proposition requiring thousands in cash on hand. And many propane customers, residing in rural or mobile home communities, are among the least able to pay.
The average propane customer will pay an estimated $1,890 this year, and it will cost $2,524 to heat a home with heating oil, according to the Energy Information Administration. Households using electricity and natural gas will spend $944 and $1,017, respectively.
While electricity and gas utilities are government regulated, propane and heating oil prices are ruled only by market forces and the price of crude oil, a major ingredient.
In four of the past five years, propane and heating oil have experienced double-digit price growth. The EIA projects propane costs will rise another 13 percent this winter, and heating oil could jump 30 percent.
Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission regulates the price of natural gas and electricity utilities by order of the state Legislature.
State Rep. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, doesn’t recall any attempts to regulate propane, or LPG, and heating oil.
Unlike the utilities’ captive audience, propane customers can shop from at least six or seven companies in La Crosse County, including companies out of Minnesota and Iowa, said Wisconsin Propane Gas Association Executive Director Randy Knapp.
But in a decade, propane prices have increased more than 100 percent and heating oil 160 percent, outpacing both natural gas and electricity. Natural gas bills have spiked above propane, but for the most part, Knapp acknowledged, natural gas is a better buy.
“Natural gas is lower, there’s no ifs ands or buts about that,” Knapp said, adding some mobile home courts recently have run natural gas lines to their lots.
Pahl’s former neighbor, Abigail Hoffman is still struggling to contain her heating costs.
Hoffman and a dozen other mobile home owners in the community off Hwy 14/61 all sip off the same propane tank. She pays a usage fee, much like a natural gas customer.
And in turn, the 62-year-old’s heating bills are eating away at her fixed income.
She paid $400 a month on average last winter. Hoffman said that’s double what she paid in the same span the year prior.
Her thermostat last winter hovered around 65 degrees, a temperature she’ll try to maintain in the coming months.
“I’ll have to,” she said. “I was cold last winter.”
Metered customers like Hoffman make up less than a tenth of all propane consumers, Knapp said. They are more susceptible to the volatility of propane prices and pay considerably more than bulk buyers.
Propane prices rise and fall with seasonal demand, and savvy buyers takes advantage of summer pre-fill programs.
But savings have been harder to come by the past two summers, Knapp noted. Customers, especially last year, held off filling their tanks, waiting for prices to fall.
But they never did.
Rose Ferris, 59, says she’s doing everything right: buying propane in bulk and locking in lower prices.
Still, Ferris said, she struggles to heat her two-story log home in Sparta.
She topped off her 500-gallon tank Sept. 12 and locked in at $2.40 a gallon. She burned through 654 gallons last winter, at a cost of about $1,200. Ferris’ supplier expects her bill to rise another $240 this year.
“It’s a struggle,” Ferris said. “I’m on a fixed income, and when your outgo is more than income, you’re hurting.”
The 264,000 residential propane users in Wisconsin — about 11 percent of all households — are among those who pay the most for propane because of their distance from major suppliers, Knapp said.
An average household in Wisconsin, particularly in the western part of the state, will use between 800 and 1,000 gallons of propane per year, he said.
A byproduct of natural gas processing and petroleum refining, propane is most commonly used by residents who live off the natural gas grid.
And in rural America — where most propane users live — retailers go head-to-head with electric companies.
Gallon for gallon, Knapp said, the cost of running an electric water heater is twice that of a propane water heater. But propane dealers can’t match the discounts offered by electric utilities.
Ferris’ husband decided to heat with propane when their house was built in 1987. She’s never considered converting to a different form of heat because she worries about other energy’s rising rates.
Many Midwesterners, however, have switched from heating oil to natural gas.
Gene Borchardt, 78, says conversion costs are too steep for him despite the potential for savings, so he continues to swallow peak prices.
Because he can only afford to fill his 250-gallon heating oil tank in 100 gallon increments, he’ll be forced to refill five times this winter.
“It’s very difficult for me,” he said. “I can only turn the thermostat so low. I’m nervous, because I don’t know how I’m going to keep it warm in here.”
Borchardt plans to keep his thermostat at 70 degrees during the day and 65 degrees at night, but said he’ll rely on a space heater and blankets for extra warmth.
He has applied to the state for financial help with heating costs.
How to save on your heating bill
SOURCE: Energy Information Administration, Wisconsin Public Service Commission
