Electric Bill $500!!!

[gathermewool]

Some of you have given me a hard time for my take on saving money: we only really heat our master bedroom and leave the rest of the house @ 50-55F. Since temps have been relatively mild, we haven't really had to use any heat in the spaces outside of the bedroom.

Electric baseboard, electric everything.

Anyway, after a pretty mild January, we received our latest bill: $500! I am completely flabbergasted!

We had our in-laws stay for a couple of days, but the rest of the month we've kept our living/dining rooms at 50F or so, which is perfectly fine for us.

We have an old hot-water heater.

We keep our MBR at 70F+

All of the lights in our house are LED.

We have a 2 month-old, so we ARE washing and drying more than usual, though we're doing so with one-year-old, LG Energy-Star washer and dryer and we typically use Eco or Eco-Normal settings.

As far as I know, there are no leaks or drafts and our heat doesn't seem to cycle on for any extended period of time. On sunny days, with our skylight, we typically see room temperatures rise above the set-point for the thermostat.

I'm honestly at a loss!

 

[CT8]

It has been cold.

 

[gathermewool]

Originally Posted by CT8
It has been cold.


We've had literally only a couple of cold days here in CT. The remainder of days have been hovering right around freezing, with daytime temps averaging in the 40s, more days than not.

Our gut-check, moving from a small condo to a normal house, came after a month of heating our entire living/dining room to 65-70F for an entire month, resulting in a bill of ~ $575. We've cut back since then, so to see a bill this high is really very disconcerting!

 

[14Accent]

Seems a little off, what was your bill in December? I don't have that problem up here in MN, but I've got a natural gas bill that comes close to that some months. I can't wait to get my bill for this month... my boiler has been running almost non-stop to keep my 100 year old house warm.

 

[gathermewool]

Our December bill was ~$300, which also seemed a bit high; however, we kept the entire house warm while family stayed for a cumulative 1.5 weeks.

 

[bullwinkle]

Sounds like the electric company is burning dollar bills in their power plant! Did your electric rates go up a bunch?

 

[gathermewool]

Originally Posted by bullwinkle
Sounds like the electric company is burning dollar bills in their power plant! Did your electric rates go up a bunch?


It will be going up, but, our delivery and generation is currently $0.1709/kWhr.

 

[javacontour]

Actual meter read or estimated usage?

 

[gathermewool]

Originally Posted by javacontour
Actual meter read or estimated usage?


Actual meter usage; we pay for actual usage. I declined average payment from the get-go, too.

 

[Wolf359]

Electric heat is the most expensive way to heat a home. Either think about getting oil or a pellet stove. Just look at your electric rates, how many kilowatts did you use and what's the price per kilowatt and compare that to previous bills. Dryers, stoves, hot water heaters can use a lot of juice. If you have a fault in one of them, that could also cause a high bill.

 

[twouvakind]

Could it be an estimated bill and not the actual usage?

 

[javacontour]

Originally Posted by gathermewool
Originally Posted by javacontour
Actual meter read or estimated usage?


Actual meter usage; we pay for actual usage. I declined average payment from the get-go, too.


You can have an non-averaged bill and still get a bill based on an estimated meter read. If they cannot read your meter, they can make an estimate. It gets worked out in the end as once the meter is read, the value is entered.

Doesn't happen as much now that the meters can be read more remotely. They may even transmit the current read over the grid. But before such meters were installed, occasionally, I'd get a bill that indicated it was based on an estimate of the meter based on prior usage and weather conditions during the billing period.

Like I said, once the meter got an actual read, the bill was good. If the estimate was too high, the next bill would be smaller to make up for the over estimate.. If the estimate too low, the next bill would be larger to make up for the usage missed by the estimate.

 

[gathermewool]

What in my bill would let me know it was based on an estimate?

Our meter is easily accessible, btw.

 

[gathermewool]

Update: my wife sucks at math...

The actual bill is $430.72.

December bill: $385.42

My wife rounded up when she read the bill to me.

Luckily for my hermit self, she acts very well in the role as social liaison.

 

[OVERKILL]

Do you not have access to natural gas? I couldn't imagine living like that

I keep my house at 20.5C when we are home and awake, 19C at night, 18.5 when nobody is here. House is old, needs new windows, double brick, has no insulation in the exterior walls as of yet (will get to it eventually) but has a fully insulated attic and new windows in the attic. All windows have storms. We run a 110,000BTU natural gas furnace, 95% efficient. Gas is on equal billing @ $140/month. We also heat our water with gas.

If I were trying to heat this place with hydro, it'd be thousands.

 

[gathermewool]

Our previous condo was heated by natural gas.

Here, electric only; no oil, no gas.

I have a wood stove in the basement, but its heat only travels up, through vents, to the living room. It will do nothing to heat the bedrooms.
The previous owners had a TV mounted in the basement, and watched TV down there all winter. Kind of skewed the bills when we checked it prior to purchase...
We expected a bit of sticker-shock, but not this bad, especially this year, with much more conservative use of heat.

 

[PandaBear]

1) Compare Kwh instead of $, the cost per Kwh may have changed due to demand and supply or tiered pricing.
2) Compare temperature outside, law of thermo dynamics means the colder outside the more it needs to heat inside.
3) Laundry in my experience takes about 3 Kwh to dry per load on delicate in my climate, so that's about how much it cost you if you do a lot of loads (i.e. every other days)
4) 70F in MBR? That'll probably takes a lot of electricity to heat, A LOT.
5) Check if you forgot to close a couple windows here and there, or leaving the thing on during day time when you have opened the window.
6) Are you also on electric water heater? That'll probably cost more too.

When you have a 2 months old it is hard to tough it out to save $ on heat. Congratulations.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by gathermewool
Our previous condo was heated by natural gas.

Here, electric only; no oil, no gas.

I have a wood stove in the basement, but its heat only travels up, through vents, to the living room. It will do nothing to heat the bedrooms.
The previous owners had a TV mounted in the basement, and watched TV down there all winter. Kind of skewed the bill when we checked it prior to purchase...
We expected a bit of sticker-shock, but not this bad, especially this year, with much more conservative use of heat.


I assume it isn't plumbed for forced air at all?

 

[92saturnsl2]

Yikes, maybe consider an electric heat pump? Suppose the cost is not surprising; anything is better than electric baseboard heat (assuming resistive elements). My house is ~1900 sq ft (inc. basement) and my highest electric bill was around $275 in dead of winter, everything is electric.

 

[javacontour]

Our bills will say Actual or Estimate beside the current and previous meter read values.

Even if your meter is accessible, doesn't mean a reader was available to actually read the meter.

But I see you have it explained.

Your bride "estimated" the bill, LOL.

Originally Posted by gathermewool
What in my bill would let me know it was based on an estimate?

Our meter is easily accessible, btw.