I am so frustrated! We just returned from a wonderful 18 day trip during which no one was in our home. During that time I received two energy alerts from our electrical company (PG&E) that we had used so much electricity that we moved up to the next pricing tier twice! Same thing happened about 3 years ago when we were out of town for two weeks.
I’m not sure if everyone’s pricing is like ours but, in our area, you pay a small amount per kilowatt for the first category of usage and go up through 4 levels of pricing; the more you use, the higher the tier, the higher the pricing. We go to the top tier every month. With a family of 5, I was annoyed but assumed we were just a large family, despite casual conversations with friends that confirmed we seemed to pay more each month than other, comparably sized families. Now we have an empty nest, use less than half the house, have unplugged the extra fridge in the garage, etc. etc. We do have a hot tub and I thought heating it was the culprit (although our bills are higher than our friends who have a pool they heat). Well, the hot tub wasn’t working properly so dh turned it off before we left on this trip and I still received two energy alerts while we were away (that we moved through two tiers).
Clearly, something’s amiss and I know it’s not dh’s and my overuse of electricity that we’re aware of (we turn off lights, keep the heat/AC at recommended levels, etc.). I’ve called PG&E several times over the years but they no longer have staff available to come check things out and have just directed me to their list of ways to conserve electricity. I really don’t think it’s my dh and me surging through the kilowatts! And, since we’re using so much while no one’s even home, I can’t even imagine what’s going on. I can see our usage online (within a day or two after that fact) but I don’t really know what to do with the information, other than feel frustrated. Oh, and a few month ago we started getting a monthly letter letting us know that we’re in the top 10% of users, encouraging us to conserve. I’m at a loss as to who I can call but I’d really like to get to the bottom of this! I would happily hire someone to investigate but don’t know who, if anyone, does this kind of work. Suggestions anyone?
Does your utility company offer free energy audits? Our does. These help identify where energy can be conserved. Ours are free…but I would,pay for this service. They go through your whole house…and flag things you can do to lower your utility bills.
Not an expert, but…I would look carefully at those applicances/systems that continue to run while you are away.
Is your hot water electric? (we turn our hot water heater off when we go away.) if there is a problem with an electric hot water heater (one element burned out, temperature setting very high, not kicking off when it should, etc) that can add up quickly. I might also check refrigerator…is the door closing; is it running constantly, and A/C system, etc. It seems that it would have to be something that continues to run and that likely has some problem that you are not aware of. Is PG&E responsible for your outside wires/meter? It seems that if you are unable to find any likely explanation they should be on the hook to make sure your electricity isn’t being lost to a damaged or improperly installed meter/connection. Same goes for any installed systems - such as A/C…will the company that installed that do a check to confirm connections/settings and electric use?
I wasn’t aware of these pricing tiers. People who use more electricity contribute more to supporting the fixed overhead required to deliver the first kilowatt to anyone. The pricing tiers should fall as you use more, not rise.
Regarding the specific issue, it makes me wonder if someone knows you are gone and is using your hot tub while you’re away. It seems suspicous to me that this happens when you are away. Do you have close neighbors who could have done this, or friends of your children?
Definitely request an audit. There are so many ways these days to reduce your energy consumption, and auditors know where to look and what to recommend based on their findings.
Also, when you receive your bill for this past month, compare usage to the usage from the same month last year. If you don’t have the old bill handy, someone at your utility company can look it up in their billing system. If the difference in kWh (kilowatt hours) used is large, something is up - and, assuming you turned off your thermostat while you were gone, the difference would not be due to weather fluctuations.
The higher price at higher use is because it gets very expensive to add extra capacity when overall use exceeds the capacity of the utility company’s lower cost baseline sources.
In terms of electricity use, check for malfunctioning appliances as noted above. Also note that some electronic things are not truly off when turned off. A watt meter can help you measure electricity use.
I think you need to establish a baseline. First find your meter and have a look at how fast you’re using watts. Then turn off absolutely everything, including unplugging appliances like the fridge. Take another look at the meter - it should be reading zero usage. From there you can start plugging the essential appliances back in and check the meter after each one to see how much energy they’re using.
Offhand I’d suspect either the fridge or a/c units are going bad and running continuously. If you turned off the a/c during your last trip, then I’d take a close look at the fridge.
If your use is only high when you’re not home, then I’d suspect teenage hot tub squatters as others have suggested. If you think that might be the case, then next vacation you can flip the breaker for that circuit and see if it helps.
Kill-a-watt or similar will give you very good info on what specific devices are using. Our library has ones that can be checked out, but they're also available on Amazon.
I would ask your utility to send someone out to make sure that your electric service has not been tapped by someone else.
Anything left on with a pump (you on a heat pump?) or a motor is suspect, though someone could be stealing energy. No way should you as much power when away than when home. Most outdoor outlets are on a GFCI which can be switched off if you think someone is plugging in to them. The hot tub is on a separate breaker. You can always set up trail cams in the yard.
My sister went on a vacation once and her very nice neighbors with a pool left her with a $300 water bill.
I’m not an expert, but one thing I learned from a neighbor, who spent time researching how to lower electricity usage, is to leave all of your appliances unplugged and don’t plug them in until you want to use them. It’s inconvenient, especially for the TV or a coffee maker, for example. That being said, we did lower our power usage somewhat by doing that. Also putting in LED bulbs in all the recessed overhead fixtures helped.
I use this with my flat iron which does not have an auto off function. It is off in 30 minutes even when I forget to turn it off. You can set it to longer periods.
Turn ac/heat completely off next 3 week trip. Get home energy audit. Have utility check meter calibration and that it’s working right. Look for heavy duty orange extension cords going to neighbors house and sniff for marijuana odor coming from their home…they might be operating a grow house and using your electric.
Thanks for the responses. I may not have been clear but our electricity use doesn’t necessarily go UP when the house is empty for weeks at a time but I would expect it to go down. Heat/AC are turned off and this last time, when I suspected our hot tub heater was the culprit, that too was off. I do not believe anyone is siphoning off our electricity, nor using our hot tub while we’re away. Our fridge works great but it is 16 years old so I do wonder…I also don’t know if our hot water heater is electric or not but, no one used hot water over the last 18 days so that can’t be it either.
I really have a hard time believing that the use of our cable, TV, etc. puts us at such a high level as to place us in the top 10% of users. Also, PG&E no longer does audits–I’d be the first in line to request one if they did. I will call again…actually, before I do, I think I’ll try flipping every breaker to ‘off’ and then turning them on one by one and seeing if I can figure out where the problem is.
There is something wrong. We once had what we were told was the highest water usage in our county. Bigger than companies. We didn’t have a pool, water sprinkler, had high efficiency appliances and didn’t take excessive showers. We fought it for years. They came and lectured us during site visits. Hubby went to the county and finally found someone else who agreed it sounded weird. They came and looked at the actual size of the pipes and we had narrow pipes but they were charging us as if we had pipes twice as large. We ended up getting an enormous refund.
Something seems weird to me. How could you possibly be in the top 10% unless you live in one of the largest homes in the area and kept lights running and a/c or heat set unreasonably high.
Is it possible the gizmo that measure power is spinning too fast?
While you’re at it get your ac/heat thermostats checked. What temp setting you keep your ac at summertime? maybe adjust up to 78 degrees to save money. Too, maybe put timers on your electric hot water heaters and lower temp setting some on 'em. hot water heater still runs when no one is home using. when’s last time you had insulation in house checked?
Thank you eyemamom! Glad you were diligent about your water usage issue and that you got a refund. I know SOMETHING’S wrong! Don’t have the largest house by any stretch and we are pretty diligent…I wouldn’t expect us to be in the bottom 10% (we don’t unplug all of our appliances when unused and plug them in when we want to use them, for example) but I’d be happy to be very average in this category.
I just spent some time analyzing the usage (available online) while we were away and our usage does seem high (avg of 16.4 kWh per day). Not sure if this is too dull for anyone reading but I did remember our gardner came one time (once every 2 weeks) and our kWh jumped to 30 for the day. That blower (?) must really use some electricity. Looking more closely at each day, it appears that we jump around 6 or 7 pm each evening and stay high until the middle of the night (2-3 am-ish) and then there’s a peak again at 6 or 7 am. This pattern is consistent both when we’re in town and the house is empty.
I’m going to recruit one of my kids home from college to assist me tonight or tomorrow night with the meter and the breaker…I am determined to figure this out!