# High Electric Bill



## joecaption

That does sound high.
Look at the bill again and see if someplace it says estimated.
If you just moved in could they have include the reconnect charge or the depostit on the bill?
Just some guesses.


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## Hardway

Furnace blower?


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## cibula11

Hardway said:


> Furnace blower?


I wondered that. We have dual zoned heating and wondered if the inefficient second story is causing the furnace to kick on more and use more electricity with the blower? ??


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## cibula11

joecaption said:


> That does sound high.
> Look at the bill again and see if someplace it says estimated.
> If you just moved in could they have include the reconnect charge or the depostit on the bill?
> Just some guesses.


No, its not estimated, but actual. They averaged the last 24 mos and it came out to 150/month. My concern is that typically electric runs lower in the winter and higher in the summer with the A/C on. 

We installed an area light on our property, but can't image that doubling our costs. I've considered the furnace blower, but even that seems like it wouldn't add more than a few bucks per month.


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## cleveman

I have a new furnace and I run the fan continuously. I put a meter on it and it uses less than a box fan on low.

Your outdoor dawn/dusk light will use some electricity. I think 20 years ago the power company was saying they would cost $30/month to run, so today it may be $60/month, but there may be more efficient lights now as well.

If you want to know what individual appliances are using, get an electrical tester with a hook and an extension cord. Open up the extension cord so the indivdual wires are exposed. put the tester hook over the black wire and set it on amps and it will tell you how many amps you are pulling. You can convert that to watts. Test it on a lamp with a 100 watt light bulb in it and see if you are pulling less than 1 amp.


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## SeniorSitizen

Just like magic the Cobra rears it's ugly head from the basket.


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## Hardway

cleveman said:


> "Your outdoor dawn/dusk light will use some electricity. I think 20 years ago the power company was saying they would cost $30/month to run, so today it may be $60/month, but there may be more efficient lights now as well.":thumbsup:
> 
> cleveman I have 3 outdoor dusk/dawn light and they are killing me on the electrical bill. But for security reasons I can not turn them off.:no: I am thinking I should put two of them on a Timer so they turn off as soon as I come home from work at 3am!


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## ddawg16

What kind of bulbs do you have in them? If incandescent, no wonder.....

I would suggest motion sensing lights.....in addition, replace the bulbs with LED. The savings along would pay for the bulbs in a few months. Also....look at your bulbs in the house. If all incandescent, go to CFL and/or LED.

My house has all CFL or LED. The only incandescent bulbs are in the oven and bathroom....my average electric bill in the summer is around $45. Winter jumps up to about $60 (FAH)


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## iamrfixit

Are you comparing your actual usage or only the cost?

Is your utility company the same as it was at the previous house?

Did you live in town and move out to the country?

Around here rural electric is substantially more expensive than electricity is in town. They cover a large area with widespread customers, they may have miles of line that only serve one or two customers, this service costs more. My brother in law moved a few miles outside of town several years ago and his bill tripled. He went from a 5 bedroom house in town to a 2 bedroom house in the country.


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## Hardway

ddawg16 said:


> What kind of bulbs do you have in them? If incandescent, no wonder.....
> 
> I would suggest motion sensing lights.....in addition, replace the bulbs with LED. The savings along would pay for the bulbs in a few months. Also....look at your bulbs in the house. If all incandescent, go to CFL and/or LED.
> 
> My house has all CFL or LED. The only incandescent bulbs are in the oven and bathroom....my average electric bill in the summer is around $45. Winter jumps up to about $60 (FAH)


MH400/U 400W Metal Halide Bulb ED37 MOGUL Base 
The midnight sun!


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## ddawg16

Me thinks that if someone needs lights on all night.....it might be time to move.....

Assuming that 400w light was running 8 hours a night....and electricity was $0.12/KWH....that would run about $12/month/light


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## cibula11

To answer the questions above: 
The area light is a metal halide lamp with a 100W bulb. I figure it's not costing me more than 10 bucks a month based on usage. We have the same electric company as our previous house, but we DID move from a small home in the city to a larger home in the country. The amount we pay per kW is similar however (within a fraction of a penny). 
The only thing I can figure is that because part of our home is drafty, the furnace and blower is running more, causing higher bills. I have also noticed our sump working quite often with all of this melting. I guess it is all adding up little by little. I was thinking that there must be something MAJOR that we are using, but it might just be a bigger, draftier house after all.


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## cibula11

Hardway said:


> MH400/U 400W Metal Halide Bulb ED37 MOGUL Base
> The midnight sun!


 The midnight sun.....that's no lie. My place went from pitch black to bright and sunny when I installed the light.


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## asinsulation

Have an energy audit done. It would give you ALOT more information then just guessing what is happening in the home


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## gregzoll

Habits is the possible reason. Only way to get an idea of day to day use, is to hook up a Ted 5000 to your incoming lines on your main panel, and that will allow you to see what is going on. When we do laundry, run the dishwasher, have the home theater on, three tv's, we can see 44 to 55kwh on those days, rest of the time, about maybe 12kwh max.


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## SPS-1

$170-200 seems high, but dividing that by 3 or 4 seems low. How many kWh/month do you use? I seem to use about 500-700 kWh/month in the winter. Everything is natural gas, but in the winter I don't worry about leaving the lights on, since the lights are all heat anyways.


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## Maxwell HVAC

SPS-1 said:


> $170-200 seems high, but dividing that by 3 or 4 seems low. How many kWh/month do you use? I seem to use about 500-700 kWh/month in the winter. Everything is natural gas, but in the winter I don't worry about leaving the lights on, since the lights are all heat anyways.


Switch over to hydrocarbon refrigerant in your A/C for the summer then watch the savings.


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## SPS-1

Maxwell HVAC said:


> Switch over to hydrocarbon refrigerant in your A/C


Is that legal?

http://www.epa.gov/ozone/snap/refrigerants/hc-12a.html


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## Maxwell HVAC

SPS-1 said:


> Is that legal?
> 
> http://www.epa.gov/ozone/snap/refrigerants/hc-12a.html


Absolutely.


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## ddawg16

I see potential problems with that. If I understand AC units correctly, they are designed for a specific refrigerant. Putting something other than what it is designed for could damage the equipment.

Without more specific information from the OP as to why type of system the OP has, the suggestion to put in a "hydrocarbon refrigerant" is pretty reckless and borders on being a backyard hack.


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## fetzer85

Can you check one of your recent bills and tell us how many kilowatt hours you used and how much you pay per kwh?


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## cibula11

fetzer85 said:


> Can you check one of your recent bills and tell us how many kilowatt hours you used and how much you pay per kwh?


Last bill was $170 and we used roughly 1900 kW....or just under 70 per day. Our cost was about $5.75 per day


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## SPS-1

So you are using 3 times as much enery as I am. Could be something like a pump that is always running, or a heater element that never turns off.


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## cibula11

SPS-1 said:


> So you are using 3 times as much enery as I am. Could be something like a pump that is always running, or a heater element that never turns off.


Yep, three time as much as we used in our previous home too. We ran a space heater during a cold snap and figured that raised it by $30. I'm anxious to see with our warmer weather how much it lowers it because our furnace blower would run quite a bit during the winter. 

Our sump pump runs quite a bit too, so that probably doesn't help out too much either. WE also have sewage ejector that runs once every couple of days, when we use the basement bathroom.

Any ideas what sort of heating element would be running continuously without me knowing?


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## SPS-1

Where houses are heated by heat pumps, they normally have an electric heating element in it as a back up, for when it gets very cold outside. It has happened that the controls failed, and the heating element was on 100% of the time. Does not seem that this would be your situation, but what I am getting at is to look for something that should be running intermittantly, but is faulty and running continuously.


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## cibula11

SPS-1 said:


> Where houses are heated by heat pumps, they normally have an electric heating element in it as a back up, for when it gets very cold outside. It has happened that the controls failed, and the heating element was on 100% of the time. Does not seem that this would be your situation, but what I am getting at is to look for something that should be running intermittantly, but is faulty and running continuously.


Yeah, thanks.

Not sure what would be running continuously, other than a furnace....I would also assume we'd hear something running continuously. I'll keep checking.


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## 47_47

Are you on a well?


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## cibula11

47_47 said:


> Are you on a well?



Yes and no. Our home is supplied by rural water and we have a horse barn that is supplied by a well. Nothing we use for ourselves in on well....just for livestock (which we don't have right now). I actually turned the all the shut-off valves to OFF so we wouldn't have any freezing.


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## Raphael DIY

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## wewantutopia

1910 home huh? Do you know if there is any insulation in the walls? We have a home built between 1910-1920 and all the walls that weren't renovated over the years had NOTHING between the studs behind the lath and plaster. They just didn't really have anything to use in those days.


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## cibula11

wewantutopia said:


> 1910 home huh? Do you know if there is any insulation in the walls? We have a home built between 1910-1920 and all the walls that weren't renovated over the years had NOTHING between the studs behind the lath and plaster. They just didn't really have anything to use in those days.


I don't think there's much. The older walls (where they drywalled over the plaster) feel colder than the newer walls that just have drywall. I know when we re-side the house we'd like to do blow in insulation.


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## 47_47

cibula11 said:


> We are on propane, which runs our furnace and hot water heater./QUOTE]
> 
> I can't go along with the poor insulation. You said you heat with propane and are using some space heaters. The aux heaters will use more electric, but I still think you may have a billing / unknown usage problem.
> 
> Did you have the high bills prior to the heating season and using electric heat?


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## cibula11

47_47 said:


> cibula11 said:
> 
> 
> 
> We are on propane, which runs our furnace and hot water heater./QUOTE]
> 
> I can't go along with the poor insulation. You said you heat with propane and are using some space heaters. The aux heaters will use more electric, but I still think you may have a billing / unknown usage problem.
> 
> Did you have the high bills prior to the heating season and using electric heat?
> 
> 
> 
> We just moved to this home in November. Our previous home on the same company, but much smaller was 2.5 times less, avg around $75 per month.
> 
> I called the company and they said the 24 month avg. for our current home is $150....I just don't know where it's all going.
> 
> As soon as we saw the $200 bill, we stopped using the space heaters and shaved about $30 off our bill.
> 
> LIke I mentioned earlier, the ONLY thing that has changed (electric wise) is that we had the old and unsafe 100 amp panel upgraded to a 200 amp, and we had an area light installed (100W metal halide). I don't think installing of these items or even improper installation of these items would cause a spike, but I guess I'm not sure.
Click to expand...


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## henrylarry6

$200 for electric bills…that’s way too much.


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## gregzoll

henrylarry6 said:


> $200 for electric bills&#133;that&#146;s way too much.


It is probably water and sewer also. It is common for our household to get a bill over $200. 1) Due to rate increases, 2) due to using the a/c in the Summer or heat in winter.

I know that some with all electric households in some areas of the U.S., their electric alone is over $200, not with sewer or water included.

Really I would not see this as far-fetched that someone can have a high use bill. It also really depends on how large their home is.

When we visit friends of ours, their teen daughter will have every light on in the downstairs, her tv on playing music from Pandora, upstairs every other light is on, then add in that they have a swimming pool, so you have not only the pump, but the salt-water regenerator, and the a/c running in the house.

Even at their condo, the kids leave all the lights on in their daughter's bedroom, and the tv on all night, after falling asleep.


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## FixitDragon

cibula11 said:


> Last bill was $170 and we used roughly 1900 kW....or just under 70 per day. Our cost was about $5.75 per day


Definately need to find what is using the electricity. 1900-2100KWh is what I use during summer months with the AC running and thermostat set to 78 (lots of over 100 days in summer) 1200ft house. Unless it is bone chilling cold you should not be using that much electricity during winter.

BTW that 1900KWh costs me A LOT MORE here in SoCal, like $500/month  $150-$175/month is my winter bill when I am around 800KWh


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## Oso954

It's an old thread guys, resurrected by henrylarry


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## dgghostkilla

Hardway said:


> Furnace blower?


maybe


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## anony

So did the OP ever figured out why?


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## caydneobrt

asinsulation said:


> Have an energy audit done. It would give you ALOT more information then just guessing what is happening in the home


I agree, consult to energy experts. :vs_coffee::smile:









------------------------
Cayden
business energy, electricity, gas and renewable energy
D-ENERGi, been in business energy since 2012, one of the longest established business energy in UK.


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## kmeutsch

There are good DIY solutions to high electric bills.......


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