This started out in the rant thread, but to help keep myself straight, I'm turning it into it's own thread.
My past two electric bills have been high, like really high. Looking at the bills, compared to last year I'm using an extra 25kWh a day, but we really haven't changed much around the house.
We have smart meters, but logging into the basic billpay site doesn't show much. Finally with much digging and a call into the power company, I found my breakdowns of useage by year, month, day, and into hour blocks. This access has had me spending most of the day today looking through past bills, putting things together and doing some guesstimating as to what is happening at the time.
billing period to billing period over the year. Yes, it makes it look temperature related going over the whole year, central AC in the summer and a pellet stove in the winter. a 500 watt space heater in the laundry room on the days below about 15F, 1500 watt programmable heater in my bathroom set at 63F. They were here in the previous year as well.
Major gap in usage from last year to this year, despite similar weather and house heating methods. But why? What has changed?
Obviously, some of the change is weather related. And it shows across the averages, but not neaarly enough to make up almost doubling consumption.
So what has changed over the past year? The dishwasher was replaced and we got a chest freezer in September, which was one of the lowest usage months of the year. That's it. No new power tools, no new electronics, a couple of LED floor lamps. We have a pretty set schedule around here, and generally do the same things all the time, no major lifestyle changes, but still, massive power consumption.
So far, I've singled out the water heater and the dryer on daily breakdowns. I've checked resistance on the heater elements in the water heater and they're good, 15 and 15.5 ohms. Thermostats are both set around 118, I get 115 from the kitchen sink eventually. It has always taken forever to get hot water around the house. It bleeds off pressure after every use, pressure relief is new as of 2020, and it always has. I need to plumb in an expansion tank, but that's a mess and another thread/headache. We have no sign of problems with the water heater other than a high electric bill.
I'm planning to tear into the dryer tomorrow, see if there is anyhting messing with the drum or if the heating elements might be on their way out. Again, not having any signs of a problem, but I can clearly see big spikes when the dryer was running so I want to check it out anyway.
I was planning to check the elements in the oven tonight but almost shocked myself when I went to disconnect the bottom element so I didn't. Mostly I just want a new oven, but I'm looking at all the big stuff.
My next step is to get a Kill A Watt and check everything else out. The freezers, the antique fridge, the new LG that's already had a bad board replaced, make sure the pellet stove is only drawing the 125 watts it's supposed to be, then start checking the smaller stuff.
25kWh a day isn't a small amount. It should be something obvious. I'll parts cannon new elements in the water heater because they're cheap and easy. Maybe try replacing the ceiling fan that liked to explode bulbs and is on a rheostat instead of a switch for some unknown reason. Keep a nose out incase a rat bit into a wire while touching a roofing nail?
I'm really grasping at straws. A big bill sucks, but without having made any major changes I'm more frustrated by where all the extra power is coming from than actually paying for it.
It did turn out that calling and asking for information led to the power company looking into my neighborhood when I mentioned flickering lights and fans changing speed, and they have found our transformer is running at and over its limit, so they're going to replace it in the coming weeks. That's going to solve some headaches I and some neighbors have had, but it most likely won't effect my bill.
