To figure out why your electric bill is
"so high", the first thing you need to do is to
figure out what's normal. If your bill
has spiked recently that's easy: Just look at
your old bills and see how much your usage has
gone up. Look only at the amount of electricity
you used in kWh.
Don't look at the cost, because the cost could
have gone up for other reasons, such as an
increase in the price of electricity itself.
If your kWh usage is similar but the cost
is now higher, then the answer as to why is on
your bill. Maybe the price of electricity
went up, or maybe your utility company has
demand charges, or maybe
you're being charged for some other city
services besides electricity.
Maybe your bill hasn't gone up but you
just think it's always been too high? In
that case the first thing you can do is to
compare your usage to what's normal. A typical
American family uses 850 kWh per month, as we
see on the how much
electricity costs page. If you're anywhere
near that with a 3-person household you're
normal. Normal doesn't mean good, though, since
most people waste lots of energy. Personally, I
use only about 99 kWh per month.
Let's say you still think there's an unknown
reason why your electrical usage has been so
high recently. In that case the next thing you
should do is to make sure the bill you
received is accurate. Once I got a bill that
said I used 2617 kWh, when I normally use only
100. A quick look at the meter showed that they
read the meter wrong. My bill said the starting
and ending meter reads were 18,441 and 21,058.
But when I got my bill checked my meter it was
only at 18,567, so clearly my meter hadn't
really ended on 21,058 the previous month. The
utility quickly refunded the $195 they
overcharged me.
If your meter matches your bill, meaning you
weren't overcharged, your next step is to
verify that your meter isn't running
gratuitously. Shut off all the breakers and
see if the meter is still spinning. If it is
then your meter is broken. It's highly unusual,
but it's possible. In that case pay an
electrician $40-50 to come out to confirm that
and to sign a statement to that effect so you
have proof when you go battle your electric
company to get back the money they overcharged
you. Videotaping it wouldn't hurt, either.
But your meter is probably not broken.
Assuming it isn't then the next step is to
make sure the meter doesn't run when
everything is turned off. That way when we
start turning appliances back on to measure
their use, we can be confident that we're
measuring only that appliance and not some other
appliance as well. To do this turn off every
light in the apartment and physically unplug
every appliance from the wall (simply turning it
off isn't good enough for some appliances. The
water heater might be hard-wired without a plug
and in that case you'll have to just make sure
it's turned off. And of course you can't unplug
a central AC system so just turn it off. Once
everything is turned off and unplugged, flip the
breakers back on one at a time and verify that
the meter still doesn't spin. If the meter still
spins and you're 100% certain you've turned off
every light and physically unplugged every
device, then try each breaker one at a time to
see if multiple breakers cause the meter to spin
or just one of them does. Try each breaker that
makes the meter spin and calculate how much
electricity each breaker is using by using
the meter timing method. Each 100 watts that
is running continuously uses about 73 kWh per
month. If you're paying 10¢ per kWh, it
costs you $7.30.
You probably didn't find any smoking gun in
that last step. So now we'll proceed to
measure how much electricity your stuff
uses. As we cover on our how
to measure electricity use page, you can
either use a $35 plug-in watt-hour meter, or you
can use the meter timing method. The latter is
free but it's a lot more cumbersome. If
you value your time and your sanity you'll get a
cheap watt-hour meter. Use your meter to measure
the electricity used by the devices in your
home. You can then use our page to figure out
how much that usage costs
you. Likely you'll find that there is no
mystery, that your bill is high simply because
you're using a lot of electricity.
At that point all you need to do is to start
using less electricity. Go to the how
much your stuff uses page to see what the
energy hogs are in a typical home, and then use
the tips on this site to reduce your electrical
use. You can do it. Remember, I use only about
99 kWh/mo.
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Special
note about this section:
In general
I will
not accept new questions of this
nature
because you can find the answer to
this kind of question yourself, using
the tools provided on this website. You
are the best person to answer this
question, because you have access to
all your bills, all your appliances,
and your electric meter. I have none of
these things. Usually when people have
sent questions of this variety they
rarely provided any meaningful clues
for me to go on (such as the number of
kWh they used or the price they're
paying per kWh), and have not taken the
first step which is to measure their
appliances' electrical use.
Above is a
step-by-step guide to figuring out why
your bill is so high. If you write to
me without having made an effort to
find the answer yourself, asking "Why
is my bill so high?" I will reply, "I
don't know, why IS your bill so high?"
:)
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