I'll trade you any day! My last bill was 3,806KWH per day, down from July-Aug. peak of 5,595. 4,200 sf +finished basement, 30 dryer loads a week to begin with.

What's your buddy smoking?

"Phantom" loads can be a lot higher than you'd expect for such things as Plasma screen TVs, computers and other electronics. I turn off the computers, printers, scanners, speakers and games systems totally at night. Even power adapters and chargers use power when they're "off".

I wouldn't bother comparing your bill to someone else's. Compare the kwh per month usage for the last few months to the same time period last year. I keep a spreadhsheet that I check monthly to see if anything is out of order. It helped me discover that DH left a space heater on OUTSIDE for over a month.

Do you have a well? If your well pump is malfunctioning it could cause a spike in electric usage. Same with septic/sewer pump.

2400 sq ft house, all electric.
2 TVs, one LCD, one CRT, 2 satellite boxes, DVR, H-DVD player with somthing on most evenings.
5 computers, 2 always on, 4 UPS, bunch of networking stuff always on.
Ancient fridge, newish freezer
Washer & dryer, 5 to 6 loads a week.
320 watts of florescents lighting the kitchen, ditto for the rec room.
Electric water heater.
Two adults, with someone usually home.
Air source heat pump
2-3 ceiling fans always turning.
Last bill, with some AC, but not much, 1,060 KWH.

"My last bill was 3,806KWH per day"

What am I smokin'? (Maybe it's post-surgery Tylenol 3s!)

That's a two month bill. Which almost makes me an energy miser compared to OP, considering the house sizes.

I agree with the possibility of a well pump problem (if you have a well). We have a small summer house and our bill for May, (we were there for a weekend) was really high. The electric co. told us to check the pump. Our plumber went there and found the washing machine hose had burst, water continued to pour into that room for a long time. I am just glad they told us to check or it could have run for a month or so. And yes, now we're gutting the room to get rid of the mold. Guess the good news is the pump is fine :)
Jo

I'm pretty good about turning out lights, i have energy saving bulbs ect. The lady on the phone told me i was using between 900-1100kw. Now my buddy which has about the same size of house as me is telling me his energy use is only about 150-200kw.

We use between 450 and 1000 KHW a month, with an average around 600. Our home is about 1900 square feet. Electric dryer and stove, refrigerator, and a well pump are among our big power consumers.

150-200KWH in a month's time is extremely low, so if he's really hitting that, good for your buddy!

As others have said, check your recent power use several months back. You may find that it's not your use that's risen, but the cost per KWH. Power companies using fossil fuels for generation have seen their costs rising, and must pass those costs to their customers. I always save my bills so I can watch for unusual spikes in power, but it's also useful to see when/if the rates have risen.

--Steve

Add our 1HP well pump to my list. I forgot about that.

Worthy, I don't think you really meant 3,806KWH per day, did you? :-)

The other thing is that sometimes the power company misreads a meter. They did that to me--added 1000kwh (or some large unit) and sent a bill for several hundred dollars, when we were averaging about $50-75/mo. Asked for a reread and they corrected.

Ask the electric company for a printout of your statements over the last 12 - 18 months if you don't have them. You'll almost certainly see rate increases, but check the kwh usage.

I'm thinking your pal with those low numbers is never home or he lives in a cave in the dark!

We have a 2900 sq ft house (new 2001). I checked our last two electricity statements (no A/C use). We used 800 - 900 kwh per month. I'm crediting daylight savings, because that's quite a drop from earilier in the year (still no A/C but more lights on, and on longer).

We draw electricity for: one 42" sXs fridge/freezer; cooktop; oven; lights; furnace blower; two TVs; DVR; 1 laptop; printer; small elec. appliances.

Can you get rid of the freezer and second refrigerator or do you live many miles from grocery stores?

Do you have a dehumidifier? Dehumidifiers can use a lot of electricity if they are inefficient models and are running all the time. My Mom had a small house and after she died we accidentally set the dehumifier so that it ran all the time during a three week period when no one was there and I was shocked at how high the electric bill was for that month.

First of all i want to thank everyone for the comments. People on this board are first class. Sorry i took me so long to reply but i can't reply at work because the monitor our internet so much. Anyways, i decided to do some investigation work last night. I almost shut everything off at the circuit breaker except for my sump which i can not shut off. It runs every 1min 13 seconds...almost ALL year. I kid you not. If we have a droubt and it hasn't rained for a very very long time it will eventually slow but otherwise its constant. I was watching the meter while i shut almost everything off and it wasy going very very slowly but every minute or show it would start turning fast for about 20 seconds and then slow again. I was like what the heck. I really thought something was wrong with the meter at that point. I though about "what is on". The sump and it cycles. So i went to the basement and timed how often the sump cycled on and off and it was almost exact of the jump i was seeing on power meter. I can't believe a sump can suck so much juice. The strange thing about it is that its pumping water fine. I bought this sump about 2 years ago at lowes and it was a pretty heavy duty unit. I think about $140 at the time. It has a wierd design where it has very two very thick power cords. The first one plugs into the second one which you then plug into your socket. I have never seen a design like this before. Maybe it has something to do with it? Could the sump be bad eventhough its pumping water fine?

Carolyn i do have a dehumifier but ive had it for 3 years now and never had an issue with it. Its relatively new also. Its a GE unit.

Well i ordered a kill-a-watt last night. I don't know if you guys know what this it. Its a relatively cheap meter that you plug into a socket and then plug your appliance into it. You leave the appliance run as normal and it will tell you how much energy the appliance has used in kw/h. I think i'm going to wait my final decision until this thing comes in. I'll see exactly how much power this sump is using. Only thing bad about these are of course you can't measure energy draw from 220 and you can't measure something you don't plug in (furnace,A/C,ect).

guys i found my sump at lowes:
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=49146-48284-57671-LWS1&lpage=none

We're all doing better than Algore, whose personal home sucked up 213,210 KWH last year. But, then, he can afford it with his earnings for preaching to the rest of us to cut back.

Worthy: Please keep your political views to yourself. The amount of electricity that Republicans claim Mr. Gore's farm uses is really not an appropriate topic. Thanks.

Thanks for the article, worthy. Inappropriate or not, people need to know. We all need to take personal responsibility for energy efficiency no matter our positions in life.

Bah!

That "article" is a blatantly dishonest politcal diatribe. The math is suspect, and they conveniently neglect to mention that it is not simply a residence, but also contains business offices. It cannot be compared to an average residence, at least not fairly.

ncage, We live in Wisconsin and our ground water is really high this year from all the rain and our sump pump has been cycling pretty much once per minute since mid March (it did stop for a week or two sometime during the past three months but then started up again). I've cut and pasted below a chart from our utility's web site showing our electricity consumption for the first five months of 2008 (when the sump pump ran pretty much every minute from mid-march until now) and the first 5 months of 2007 (when the sump pump didn't run much at all) so that you can see the increase in electricity consumption caused by our sump pump. The chart didn't cut and past very well so I hope you can understand it. We live in a 3,190 square foot two-story house. Our basement is 1,900 square feet.

Column #1: Read Date
Column #2: # Days
Column #3: kWh
Column #4: kWh/Day
Column #5: $ Amount

May 09, 2008---30---792---26.4---$115.34
Apr 09, 2008---29---719---24.8---$99.89
Mar 11, 2008---29---499---17.2---$71.99
Feb 11, 2008---32---694---21.7---$97.68
Jan 10, 2008---31---774---25.0---$104.71
May 09, 2007---28---521---18.6---$75.09
Apr 11, 2007---33---664---20.1---$89.00
Mar 09, 2007---28---600---21.4---$79.91
Feb 09, 2007---30---652---21.7---$86.72
Jan 10, 2007---30---723---24.1---$95.27

Or it would appear that Carolyn53562's sump pump cost apparently less than $11 per month in 2008 compared to 2007. That didn't allow for rate increases.

On link, note that whopping surge-usage for sump pumps. That means every time it comes on.... wow!

And thinking of the start-ups... I always thought sump pumps were supposed to run when there was water in the pit and not at all otherwise... maybe there is a problem with the water sensor which is causing it to cycle so often?

Here is a link that might be useful: appliance electricity use

"That "article" is a blatantly dishonest politcal diatribe."

Not according to impartial debunker of everything in sight, Snopes.com.

What I think it illustrates is the difficulty of conserving electricity in a big rambling old house in a miserably hot climate no matter how much you retrofit.

By contrast, consider George Bush's relatively modest ranch house designed from scratch for conservation.

I'm sorry if mentioning these well-known examples offends political supporters of either gentlemen as I support neither of them politically.

I read Snopes before I posted. I stand by what I said, And don't assume I support Gore. That is just as offensive as the politcal web site you linked to.

Meldy-our sump pump only runs when there is water in the pit. Unfortunately, it has been taking about 1 minute to fill the pit enough to cause the pump to run. During the past few months, you could hear the water pouring into the pit as if there was a faucet in it that was turned on-yesterday the flow finally started to slow down again and hopefully it will stop by the end this week (unless we get more rain). We put in a good drainagle system for our house, but the stone we put under the basement floor sure soaks up the water and then that water all flows into the drain tiles around the perimeter of the basement floor and into the sump pump pit. We have a finished basement and are afraid that the pump will break and our basement will flood. Luckily, we live on a sloped lot, so we are putting in drain pipes from the house to the ditch next to the road so that the drainage system around our house drains to the ditch by gravity instead of with the sump pump (although the sump pump will still be there as a back up).

have they ACTUALLY read your meter, or did they estimate? they could have even been estimating low and just finally read it and billed for the difference too.

our POCO used to read the meter every 2-3 months, the other month or 2 they jsut took a wild guess based on our average usage. if they guess high or low, then the next reading it all evens out. now they put in new meters that report back in via BPL, so no more estimated bills or worrying about the reader letting teh dog out of the fence.

look closely at your last few bills, if they estimated there should be a code number or letter that tells you this.

"...also contains business offices."

Are those the offices selling carbon offsets?

Gore and Tipper having home offices hardly counts as "containing business offices."

Well, it's interesting to see our electrical usage, down three little worthies un-leashed into the world, is reduced by 40%-50%. 500 sf. smaller house but absent any insulation in the walls or basement and running on 30-year old central a/cs and furnaces.