Technical > Home Improvement > Our PG&E Bill averages $600-$800 per month, sometimes more..

Our PG&E Bill averages $600-$800 per month, sometimes more..

how big is the home, what to you keep your HVAC system set at, style of lighting, types and age of appliances, the list goes on and on.

BTW, i'd kill for only 2200kwh a month. my house uses more than that on a mild month where the 2 HVAC systems are shut down. wife and 2 daughters think light switches only cut on and that all rooms should be a full brightness at all times.
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Lack of Preparation on YOUR Part does NOT Constitute an Emergency on Mine!

reply to gborrillo
The solution is to find out what is drawing power and go from there.

Our electric bill has never once been over ~$120/mo. Gas furnace & gas water heater.

reply to gborrillo

reply to davidg
Right, I didnt give any info....ok, here is a list off the top of my head...

2400 sq feet home, central heating and cooling, but we rarely USE them because of our bill. I would say that we have the heating on about 8 hours a week during the winter, and 1 hour a week for the cooling in the summer.
appliances:
basic kitchen apps : fridge, dishwasher, microwave - all bought within the last 6 yrs.
washer dryer about 10 years old
second fridge in garage
salt water tank
home theater setup with video/audio components.

i would say we are pretty conscientious with our energy use - always turn off lights, dont leave tv on/pc on at night, etc.

the main reason i am asking is because of the attached graph. it just seems like we must be doing something terribly wrong to be so high off the curve.

reply to gborrillo

reply to gborrillo
What type of water heater? Are you all electric or gas?

reply to gborrillo
Just north of you. 1500 sq ft. $100 every month. 2-3 people gas and electric. Maybe the second fridge and the salt water tank?

reply to gborrillo
One of the easiest ways to troubleshoot this is to get a clamp on amp meter. Open up the circuit breakers panel and use it to check current draw on each circuit.

That gives you a one time snapshot to check at various times of day with different appliances running.

/tom

reply to gborrillo
Or get a TED5000.

My house is about the same size as yours, and about the only difference is that I don't have a salt water tank. Do you have to heat this or otherwise put energy into it ?

I do have a pool , and I USE my Heatpump all year round - July / August were my 2 highest months of 2800 KWh. However, my rates are probably much less than yours, since even those 2 months didn't exceed $200-$225 for us.

reply to gborrillo
What type of meter do you have?
Link is from 2010.
»gigaom.com/cleantech/pges-smart-···ustomer/

quote:

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In mid-2007 PG&E was only installing around 1,000 smart meters per day. But by the end of 2007, it had ramped up to 2,250 smart meter installations per day (Page 185). And by the middle of 2008 (Page 408) PG&E’s daily average smart meter installs bumped up to 10,000 per day.

Early on in the project, PG&E’s main priorities clearly centered on getting the network and meters installed on time, and avoiding cost increases. At the beginning of 2008, PG&E said its costs could run up to $166 million beyond what the CPUC had authorized for the project before contingency funding would kick in (Page 252). At one point PG&E also said its meters were behind deployment by 11,531 meters (page 283) and that its employees were working “extended hours and Saturdays to make up,” (Page 283). It quickly made up that gap by speeding up deployments even more.

By mid-2008 it also became clear how much PG&E was susceptible to any delays or missteps by its vendors. In July 2008, PG&E said supplies of meters from vendor Aclara had slipped. The utility had given itself a cushion by speeding up installations, but it said that was “being eroded” by Aclara’s delay (Page 350). Soon after, PG&E also made the decision to deploy network and meter technology from Silver Spring Networks in Davis, Oakdale, Roseville and Lincoln, Calif.

By October of 2008, issues with Aclara became far worse, with the finding that there was “Poor read performance on 5 percent of the installed Aclara meters” (Page 383). PG&E acknowledged at this point that problems could potentially arise with customers. At that time PG&E upgraded that risk priority and explained it as:

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reply to gborrillo
Is your heat and dryer natural gas or electric?

Salt water tank = 24/7 pump + electric heat. When I did an energy audit (required for solar panels) they called my fish tank out as public enemy #1 (but mine is small so it's not so bad).

That second fridge isn't helping you either. How old is it?

What kind of coffee maker do you use? If you have a pot that you leave on a hot plate for several hours in the morning, it can gobble up a lot of power. We switched to a thermal carafe which helped quite a bit.

I'd suggest getting a kill-a-watt so you can measure individual things. Plug it into your AV gear and see how much power your system is drawing when it is supposedly off. Another culprit I found was that most of our PC speakers were drawing a lot of power even when switched off.

Can you tell I also live in a CA area with ridiculously expensive electricity?
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AT&T U-Hearse - RIP Unlimited Internet 1995-2011
Rethink Billable.

reply to gborrillo
Are you allowed to shop electric rates in your part of CA.?

reply to gborrillo
One of the first things I would check would be the ID numbers on the gas and electric meter and make sure they match the ones on your account if you haven't already. Other than that, try what has been recommended above. I know on my meter it scrolls through and shows you current kw usage. You could use that to track down high use appliances and such.

reply to gborrillo
2200 Kwh would be less than $240/mo in Dallas,

About $190 at my rates. $.081

reply to gborrillo

reply to gborrillo
Culprits for something like this are usually tankless water heaters that draw 220, a bad appliance that's somehow draining too much current (maybe that second fridge.

The most basic way to check this is to go look at your meter. See if it's just spinning real fast. If it is, then start unplugging stuff until you find the cause. If it's not, start turning things you normally use on until you find the cause.

If you turn on the hot water and the meter takes off spinning like a top, you have a tankless water heating system that's killing your bill despite what they told you in terms of it saving you money. Sometimes big homes use two of those units and that can really kill the energy bill.

reply to gborrillo
Someone around here was complaining about high electric bills. He eventually traced it to a built-in space heater that was running 24/7 in an unused bathroom in the basement. See - »Re: WTF Massive, unexpected jump in Electricity usage... :(

You might want to turn off everything in your home (at the individual devices, not the breakers), then see if your meter is registering any usage. Go from there, and track down any other power draws.

EDIT: Compared to the average usage shown in your graph, you're using an extra 850 kWh per month. Guess what - That's the equivalent of a 1200 Watt space heater running 24/7. Hmmm...

reply to gborrillo
How is your rate structure set up. In South Florida we had electric service from FP&L AKA Florida Plunder and Loot. FP&L set up a two tier "conservation" rate structure where the customer paid more per KWH when they used more than the first tier level. At one time the first tier was 1000 KWH. Customer paid more per KWH if they used more than 1000 KWH. No consideration was given to the size of the house to establish the number of KWH's provided in the first tier.

About a year ago a contributor to this forum, posted an inquiry about high electric consumption and found that a built in electric heater had been left on in a basement bathroom. Bathroom electric heaters should be energized by a one hour timer.

reply to mityfowl