I just got my hydro bill, and my usage for the past 50 days is up. Way up.
I used as much juice on this bill as I did in my two previous bills combined.
The facts are these:
1790 kwh from Sep 12 to Nov 1. (50 days)
980 kwh from July 5 to Sep 12 (69 days)
This time last year – 1160 kwh from Aug 25 to November 6 (73 days)
That’s a lot of electricity for the upper level of a duplex.
Last year I was unemployed and using incandescents. This year I’m working and using mostly CFLs.
I see three possible reasons for a spike, but even then I don’t think the draw would be that significant.
-The bottom element on my oven flared up and died last week… The new one was supposed to arrive yesterday. So, definitely something wrong there, but I don’t use the oven that much.
-The garage door motor was replaced in October – going from 0.5 hp to 0.75 hp. (I don’t know whether it’s wired into my line or one of my two neighbours). But again, the thing goes up and down an average of 4 times a day. 8 times max.
-My fridge door is a little off-balance, so it doesn’t always make a perfect seal. But even so, if it sticks open for an hour and I don’t notice, it’s open less than 2mm at the handle. I’ve checked and even if it’s not totally closed, there’s no sign of a draft anywhere.
I honestly don’t know enough about how much electricity each appliance uses to know if one of those, or even all three combined, would make that much of a difference in my hydro bill.
So my question… Would one of those appliances draw 800-1000 kWh in 50 days? Or has something gone wrong with my meter?
Well, first up, I’d ask the power company for a double-check. Mistakes happen. Then I’d turn everything off and see if my meter was still turning, because it’s possible your duplex neighbor has tapped into one of your circuits, intentionally or otherwise.
You’ve got an increase of roughly 15 kWH per day to over 35 kWH per day. Breaking it down further, that’s ~833 watt-hours per hour. This is equivalent to having a 1/2 hp motor running 24/7. The refrigerator may account for some of this, but I doubt it could have that much impact even if the door was standing wide open.
Bryan Ekers’ suggestion about having the meter re-checked is a good one, but while I was waiting on that, I’d do a little investigating on my own. The neighbor theory is a good place to check, also. They may have an extension cord or such plugged into a circuit on your service.
If you have an electric meter with the spinning disk, it’s pretty easy to see how fast you are burning electricity. Start turning off circuit breakers one at a time and see which one has the greatest effect on the meter. Then find out what is served by that circuit that could be consuming the power. Anything with electric resistance heating is a prime suspect. Electric heat in furnaces, water heaters, dryers, etc may have a malfunction that lets them run almost continuously. I ave seen a bad heat sequencer in an electric furnace triple an electric bill in a month.
And fix the refrigerator door. Even if there is no draft, it is definitely causing the refrigerator to operate much more than necessary.
Since you say you live in a duplex, I’ll add this - in the past, several folks on the SDMB have found out, or suspected, that their wiring was such that they were unintentionally paying for some of their neighbor’s electricity. I lived in such a place, where I ended up paying for the air conditioner due to the way the wiring was.
Good suggestions so far. Just a couple of thoughts to add:
In a lot of places they only read the meters every other month. When they don’t read it, they’ll send you out an estimated bill based on the electric usage for last year. If your usage has been higher than last year, you may not see it at first. Then you get whacked for the extra usage for both months, since they didn’t bother to read it the month before.
If the element on your oven died, it won’t be drawing current as long as you have the oven off (and if it flared up and died, you shouldn’t be turning the oven on!).
You might want to check the garage door opener to make sure it is shutting off when the door is both up and down.
One more possibility: a leaky hot water tap. My mother’s house one month had a whopping 8600 kWh. That’s pretty much impossible. That’s about 12 thousand watts every hour. Think 10 1200-watt refrigerators with the compressors running continuously 24/7.
The culprit turned out to be a leaking hot water pipe underneath the house, so the hot water heater was pretty much running 24/7.
We had a spike in electric bills earlier this year, a significant increase even though our consumption stayed about the same.
When I quizzed the utility about it, they said that our meter had been replaced about the time the bills went up, and that we had been paying much lower rates than would be expected for the preceding time, probably because the meter was old and not working properly. :dubious:
They are coming out to double-check the new meter to see if it’s working as it should. I don’t expect much, partly because I doubt there’s a whopping incentive for utility repair people to discover that the meter is overstating usage.
So maybe you had an old meter replaced and that accounts for the jump in bills.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Hydro-Quebec actually reads the meter every time they send out me a bill – that’s not the case for everyone, but it’s marked on the bill whether it’s an estimate or not.
And no, I’m no longer using the oven (duh!). It stopped working when it flared up.