Either your neighbors did something dramatic to reduce their usage leaving you in the 10% least efficient, or something is fishy.
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/whyhigh.html
BTW, I am not saying that this is what is going on, but when I typed “electricity meter” into Google, one of the top suggested choices that popped up was “electricity meter hacking”. Ouch!!!
Thank you for the link, BB. More things to try with our meter. Have to be honest, though, the thought of unplugging every single thing in the house seems very overwhelming and dh will resist every inch of the way.
16.4 kilowatt-hours per day is not that high. We are in the mid-20s and we have gas heat and hot water (lots of cooking and laundry, two refrigerators plus a big freezer).
Any chance your refrigerator is dying? Those times look like dinner-breakfast.
^or electric dish washer using hot water after meals, oven preparing meals, and showers bathing
Refrigerators take up a LOT of electricity, as do freezers and computers (if they are running). When I knew someone was doing bytcoin mining, his electric bill would be an extra $100/month just due to the mining! He made a net loss every month as he only earned about $.05, so after 18 months or so, he reluctantly stopped and the electric bills have lowered again.
What kind of heating system do you have?
What area of the country do you live in?
The average US household uses about a thousand kWh per month. If you are using 16 per day that’s about half average.
Refrigerators don’t use much - only about 50 kWh per month and newer fridges are much more efficient than older ones.
Computers might draw as much as 200 watts, so if you run it 24/7 without any energy saving shutdown function, it can use as much as 150 kWh/month. At $0.12/kWh that would be about $18.
Just looked at our electric bill for April…about 1500 KWH used or average 50 KWH/day…$189. Maybe used our a/c a little bit that month here in Florida. I thought we were light users but 30 KWH/day would be only if we didn’t use a/c or heat at all for a month. $400/mo. electric bills are not uncommon for many in our area of Florida summertime when it is really hot and many grind their air conditioners hard. Our electric company is a user/member owned rural electric co-op with hundreds of thousands of meters…it’s America’s largest REA. The co-op will come out and do energy audits for its members.
If your utility company doesn’t do audits,surely some other organization in your area does. I’d start with the local agency that supervises the utilities.
The electric bill for the house I owned before getting married was twice as high as the apartment I lived in before, which was bigger. The culprit? The street light was wired into my house, so I was paying for the light. Any chance something like that is occurring at your property?
@JustOneDad – is there an average square footage to accompany the 1000 KW/month use? I just pulled our electric bills and we are over that, but I think the forced air (hydro air) is a culprit during the cold months.
When we had a dying fridge, it was using a lot of power. Our electric bill dropped about 50% after landlord replaced it.
We don’t use AC or heat at all, which helps keep our bills pretty low.
For the month of 3/27 to 4/27 we used 727 kwh. That is a 2800 sf house (4 br) with 3 people living in it (4 people until 4/6 actually). That is 3-4 laptops (one each) 3-4 tvs (1 each) 2 refrigerators one newish french door model and one 13 year old side by side in garage. Gas heat and water. The TVs are all probably 5 years old or less. I think the old kind used more energy. If we were away the tvs and laptops would be off, but the fridges would still run.
I would do some experimenting, but those lowest tiers may be for small apartments who only use a minor amount because the landlord provides heat and water or something, or for small businesses that don’t even have refrigerators and are closed at night with nothing running. Around here there are a lot of small homes that probably use less.
I would be unhappy if I went away for a couple of weeks and my bill was till high, so worth investigating.
fyi, we are in NJ and it was mild, probably did not run ac and only a little heat (gas forced air)
So what is the average electric bill here…our 2500 sqft house with 1000 sqft in the finished lower level uses about $120 a month in electricity…three people, one fridge, one TV, smartphones and tablets charging, one computer on all the time. All LED light bulbs. Electric dryer.
Seems reasonable to us.
Re post 17 and unusual water usage–Have a friend who had really high water bill and attributed it to broken water pipe so had people come out to check. Nope, the neighbors had tapped into the water line for their marijuana grow house…