High Electricity Bill

[Jamie N.]

Hey everyone, thanks in advance for your replies. I live in a one story all electric house. 1,800sqft and my bill is insanely high! Bill shows that this month last year I used roughly 1,200kWh but this month is 2,295! Energy company confirmed meter is good, and AC guy can't find an issue with the system. I've heard it may be an appliance, but I need help with one thing. My digital meter does this thing where the bar fills up with three pings and empties with three pings from left to right. So the left bar comes on, then the middle, then the right (shaped like an arrow), and then the left disappears, then the middle, then the arrow. All in all it takes 3 seconds for that cycle to run. Is that fast? If so, how do I determine the issue?

 

[Dana]

If you're heating with auxiliary heat strips in the ducted AC, the relay for the heat strips could be sticking on sometimes. If you're heating with a heat pump that has auxiliary heat strips the heat strip could be engaging prematurely (or sticking), or the refrigerant charge could be out of spec.

I have no idea what meter you're looking at or how to interpret the display from the description. Can you post a picture?

Was the average outdoor temperature this year during that month about the same as last year? Look up the monthly heating degree-days for those meter-reading periods on degreedays.net and sum them up for comparison. If you want to post the exact meter reading beginning and end periods I can do that for you.

An "extra" ~1000-1100 kwh in a month is like having a background draw of something like 1500 watts. Any appliance drawing drawing that much power is going to be quite hot.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Reach4]

Turn off the breaker your well pump, and see if that changes what your power meter and digital meter does. If that does not slow the power meter, turn off every breaker to see what changes indications.

I find your digital meter description incomprehensible. You did not even say what your digital meter was connected to.

 

[Dana]

Turn off the breaker your well pump, and see if that changes what your power meter and digital meter does.

I considered that too, but most homes in Cypress TX (and other Houston suburbs) are on municipal water systems, not private wells.

A quick look at degreedays.net monthly data showed that December 2018 was warmer than December 2017, with about 20% fewer heating degree days, so it's unlikely to be simply attributable to more space heating electricity use with already checked-out and properly functioning equipment.

 

[hj]

I assume you have an electric water heater, so the FIRST thing I would do is check for a leaking hot water line, which would make the heater operate 24/7.

 

[Reach4]

Get a clamp-around ammeter. Look at the incoming hots and neutral. If the weird load is 24o, expect to see the pulsations on the two hots but not the neutral. If it is 120 volt, expect the pulsations on one hot.