We were warned last year that rates would be going up this month. We have all electric everything, including baseboard heat.
Last month: $0.2320/kWh overall (supply + delivery)
This month: $0.3342/kWh
Increase: 44% overall (supply rate $361.95, Delivery $146.73 = $508.68)
Use: 31% less than last January (1522kWh this Jan vs 1987kWh last Jan)
- Ave temp was higher this year: 39F this Jan vs 26F last Jan)
House: a little less than 2700 ft^2; however, half of that is the unheated basement
TL;DR: all-electric heat stays off to the entire house most of the time. Switched to a cheaper supplier, but won't take effect until next billing cycle, earliest. Home energy audit Feb. Looking for obvious things to save money
Larger Loads:
- All electric heat: As some of you know, I've kept the heat off for most of the month (not low, off completely), since we don't mind hanging out in the 50s, which I know is extreme for some of you. The heat is controllable in each individual room, so it's not on in unoccupied spaces.
- I run three relatively new dehumidifiers for at least 12 hrs/day. The one in the bathroom in our main bedroom is used after showers since it's pretty much all just extra heat to the bedroom, so nothing is wasted out of the vent. The one in the basement is needed to keep < 50% RH.
- The hot water heater is probably at the end of its life, but it's wrapped in a fiberglass blanket. In the 50F basement, the temp between the heater shell and blanket is usually 40-50F higher than ambient. The setpoint is 122F at the farthest faucet.
- I have two fridges and a freezer. We tend to stock up on staples (like we just got 3# of chicken thighs for a buck a #, and we buy stuff from Costco when it's on sale, which sometimes means buying things like soup and other perishable items in bulk and either refrigerating or freezing them.
- Dishwasher: we use it pretty much daily and it's an older Bosch model. It has it's quirks, but does an excellent job. My wife, unfortunately, likes to pre-wash the dishes with the faucet on hot-high. I scrub the dirty dishes to break up any gunk and then use just enough hot water to get the chunks off. I do just enough to prevent issues with the washer. If I had to guess, she probably uses an order of magnitude more energy/water than the washer itself, but I can't quantify that.
- Washer/Dryer: 4 yo Samsung. The front loader is efficient, but my wife likes to run the dryer on medium instead of low. The dryness sensor isn't very good, so it tends to run longer than required. I use the lowest setting and check it as soon as it's finished the manual cycle an hour or so later. The dryness sensor is very inaccurate on the low heat setting, so even on the driest setting, it will stop the cycle too soon. Even on the mid setting, it will also tend to run the dryer too long on Medium.
The water heater and the dryer are probably the main offenders.
Short-term solutions
- I bought mattress pad heaters for all three of the beds, so the heat has been off in the bedrooms at night for the past week or so, whereas we were keeping it between 60-62F, maybe higher if we were feeling cold. It wasn't uncommon for my wife to want closer to 68-70F when she was feeling particularly cold. My wife/kids keep the pad set to 5/10 and have no complaints at all. I've been 2 or off (i like the cold). They control the thermostat in the rooms, so if they wanted it warmer they can do what they want. That was the compromise for keeping the living spaces colder.
- I have a home energy audit later in Feb. I know we need some upgrades. I know for sure that insulation will help, but, as I said, we don't use much heat at all, so 0 X anything = 0
- I'm going to start measuring other loads, such as the dehumidifiers, for energy usage with my smart plug to see if anything is going crazy.
- I lowered the hot water heater temp from 127F to 122F at the farthest location away from the heater
Long-term solutions:
- Last month we switched suppliers, and the paperwork states that it will take 1-2 billing cycles to take effect. We should have done this sooner. I'm kicking myself for dropping the ball on this! The price we locked in at is even lower than what we were paying before with the default supplier (new rate will be $0.1659/kWh vs last month's $0.2320/kWh), so, if this bill had been based on the new supply rate and the current delivery rate (that doesn't change), our bill would have been roughly $400, which is still very high for how little energy I feel we use.
- Add insulation
- Possibly replace the hot water heater, although prices are pretty high right now and I'm not sure I can use a hybrid tank at this moment due to such a cold basement. I'm looking into whether a diverter is possible, so I can exhaust the cold air outside during the winter, but inside during the warm weather to help dehumidify the basement.
I'll be going back through the related threads online to see if I'm missing something, but I don't think I'm missing anything obvious.
