Let’s say two extremes:
family of four. Most meals cooked on electric range. Many loads of laundry. Keeps temperature regulated through electric heating and air conditioning.
sole resident in two bedroom apartment. Usually eats out. Couple loads laundry every two weeks. Rarely uses electric heating. Uses A/C occasionally.
It depends. New or old AC. Insulation?
One extreme 2,000 to 4,000 KWH
Low extreme 200 to 600 KWH
I live alone in a 2 bedroom apartment. When I’m not using the AC (ie anytime that isn’t summer) I may only use 120 kwh a month.
However I have gas for heating and the stove. Also I don’t have a W&D hookup. When it is 80-90F outside (July for example) I use closer to 700 kwh in a month.
Just got our bill for August. 2 people, gas appliances, A/C used as needed (northern Ohio, average daily temp 74 F) = 768 KWH.
Dennis
Another data point here:
family of 6, 4 kids under 10 (= endless laundry and dish washer running)
Old house with partial new insulation
Geothermal heating/cooling - electrically driven
Rest of entire house run on electricity; no other power source (all cooking and water heating is electric; double fridges and freezers).
Monthly uses about 2,500 KWh.
Single guy in a smallish 4-bedroom house, gas kitchen and heat, no air conditioning here. Last month’s usage was 372 kWh
Family of two in a three BR with a/c, electric hot water . . . this past month 1200kwh.
I’m assuming OP is looking for facts and not a poll?
We can start here: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3
But we’d need to then look at what the typical household is.
EIA is a trove of data. I haven’t seen the specific breakdown you’re looking for, but I haven’t been digging hard.
223 kW-hrs last month … no A/C, me and a mess of cats, no W/D, super-duper energy efficient refer … so most of that electricity is for this damn computer I guess …
At 6.9¢ each, my billing for usage is only $15 … system maintenance charges $26 … Douglas fir trees are murder on electrical grids …
Seeing as the OP hails from tropical Edmonton, let’s introduce the idea of the Degree day - Wikipedia and better yet Heating degree day - Wikipedia
When I was growing up in coastal Southern California, no local houses had AC. And we could go months or sometimes even whole years without turning on the heat. Our degree-day requirement was nil.
Where I live now, heating degree days are below 500 = more or less zero. Substantially all of Canada is above 10,000. Conversely, I now enjoy paying for ~4000 cooling degree days per year whereas all of Canada is below 500 degree days = substantially zero cooling.
Bottom line: This is one of those things where we certainly can compute an average, but very few people will have the average experience.
According to EIA, 18% of residential electric use is A/C … astounding … {Cite}
My data point.
Single person, 1 bedroom house, coastal climate, no A/C, largest electrical user is the 3/4 hp submersible pump. I actually recorded my electrical usage each month for five years. My average monthly usage for the five year period: 206 Kwh. Typical electric bill: $39.
watchwolf has it good. My cost per Kwh is 11.45¢, which I think is a great deal for the versatility of electricity.
Your “astounding” is surely conditioned (heh :)) by your local experience in cool Oregon. In summer easily 70% of my power consumption goes to AC.
Another factor is that in much of the country (both our US & the OP’s Canada), domestic heating is not provided by electricity; it’s some form of gas. OTOH, substantially 100% of the AC nationwide is electrical. Even a geothermal heat sump / heat pump uses electricity to move the working fluid around.
My cite earlier had US contour maps for heating & cooling degree days. I’ve never found a good contour map for the sum of the two. If anyone knows of one I’d appreciate a cite.
My point here being that if, counterfactually, all heating in the US was electrical, you’d see a much larger fraction of total electrical consumption go to heating and a corresponding reduction in the fraction going to cooling. But because here in the real world we tend to offload any serious heating needs to gas, that reduces the total fraction of electricity spent on heat and “artificially” raises the fraction spent on cooling.
Given modern high efficiency electronics, most folks habit to avoid leaving lights lit for no reason, plus the ongoing transition to LED lighting, there’s not really too many loads in a modern house besides the AC. My AC is probably running 5 hours per 24. My washing machine and dryer are running 5 hours per week collectively. After that I’ve got a stove/oven. If I cook all 7 dinners at home (rare, but not impossible) the stove runs about 4 burner-hours total per week.
I have no clue about the duty cycle or consumption of my fridge. There’s also HWH, whose consumption I’m also clueless about. But it’s pretty clear the AC is the lions’ share during the months it runs. Then for 7 months a year it’s off. During two of those I substitute electric heat.
My example is of course just one more anecdote, exactly as valid as your own. But one heck of a lot of Americans live in air conditioner country. An ever-growing fraction in fact.
What’s galling to me is the lack of aggressively energy efficient building codes in the booming southern states. We’re slapping up houses & light commercial buildings like mad and many of them are actively building in unnecessary waste and cost that’ll be with us for another 30 years.