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gborrillo
join:2009-07-05
Campbell, CA

gborrillo to davidg

Member

to davidg

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

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.

NS4683
join:2000-08-25
NJ

NS4683

Member

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

djrobx
Premium Member
join:2000-05-31
Reno, NV

djrobx to gborrillo

Premium Member

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?
Bob4
Account deleted
join:2012-07-22
New Jersey

1 edit

Bob4 to gborrillo

Member

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...
pandora
Premium Member
join:2001-06-01
Outland

pandora to gborrillo

Premium Member

to gborrillo
said by gborrillo:

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 can offer a comparison with Connecticut if that helps. We are in a period of renovation, and for almost a month our utility didn't have a meter attached to the home (we upgraded service and the union that installs meters is different from the union that installs new service).

For one month our utility was required (not certain by whom) to use the average use of the other homes attached to our transformer. The average size of a home in my neighborhood is around 2,500 sq ft, most homes were built in the early 70's. Most have been modified over time.

The average electric bill of 6 of my neighbors, was 37 Kwh per day. In December, these older homes, mostly using oil or liquid propane heat used about 1,100 Kwh.

That is less than half my normal average, which is around 2,600 Kwh. For comparison, my home is 40+ years old (built in 70, CO in early 71). Has no insulation under the windows in the bedrooms, used mostly heat pump with auxiliary heat when needed. Auxiliary heat was oil heated hot water. House size was 3,200 sq ft. We have 4 LED smart TV's, our treadmill is used for 1 hour a day, our hot water is electric. We have 1 28 cubic foot fridge / freezer, and 2 21 cubic foot freezers.

We use a lot of game consoles, and a lot of PC's. 2 dryers (propane based) and 2 washers (front loaders) one dishwasher (Bosch). All lights are LED. Most rooms have ceiling fans for comfort.

Over the years, all external doors and windows were replaced with whatever was energy star at the time, often better than minimum energy star when possible. My kids are awful about turning stuff off, but I try to turn stuff off as possible.

The old home had a retrofitted upper level only heat pump for heat and air conditioning. A typical electric bill for us would be around $450 per month.

We use more than you do per month, and seem to pay less. I know our bill went down by about $50 a month when we moved from electric to gas dryer, and about $25 from electric cooktop to gas (gas in this case is propane). We replaced windows, doors, and added the maximum insulation possible in our old 2 x 4 walls whenever renovating interior walls. Of all the insulation, the most cost effective was insulation in the attic. Our old attic had R13 we bumped it to R38 and that made the biggest difference by far over any other change in insulation, windows or doors (YMMV).

It isn't your consumption that is a problem imo, it's California's charge for power. Whatever PGE is doing, or the state is doing to PGE, you are paying an awful lot for 2200 Kwh per month.
XXXXXXXXXXX1
Premium Member
join:2006-01-11
Beverly Hills, CA

XXXXXXXXXXX1

Premium Member

I'll piggyback on pandora, as I live in Connecticut as well, and say that my bill averages about $190 per month, including summer A/C and winter heating use. Note that bills are much bigger in the summer when A/C is used, and much lower in the spring and fall when neither furnace nor A/C is running. I have propane for everything (Furnace, tankless hot water, stove, dryer, BBQ grill, and backup generator), and it makes a big difference in my bill. That and the fact that I went pretty beefy with the insulation (2x6 walls, with extra insulation in the attic) when I built in '09.

I'd look to your insulation levels first, regardless if you are mostly an A/C or heating consumer, as that's typically where you'll get the most bang for your buck when looking to lower energy expenses.
gborrillo
join:2009-07-05
Campbell, CA

gborrillo to NS4683

Member

to NS4683
gas water heater. the second fridge has been unplugged the last month and our bill didnt change a dime. well, maybe a dime. as for the tank, i do have metal halides and understand that they do use up quite a bit, not to mention the water pump, heaters etc. as luck would have it, my tank actually went down (my 2 year old daughter decided to feed a gallon of sugar to my fish) so that has been unplugged completely for the past 2 months. there was a bit of a dip in our bill (100 or so). i didnt expect it to account for much more than that.

one thing i do recall....pge recently installed these smart meters in our home...say about 6 months ago. before that, we had the old style meters with the rotating dial. one thing i recall, when going through this, was when we turned our dryer on, the dial literally almost went berserk , where it was spinning ridiculously fast. i havent checked it recently with the new meter. its almost as if my wife and i have grown accustomed to having a 1000 pge bill, so we have pretty much given up. based on all the comments, it may be worth revisiting once again. i think i will try the turn everything off and then turn it on one by one to see if anything shoots outta control.

bemis
Premium Member
join:2008-07-18
united state

bemis to gborrillo

Premium Member

to gborrillo
OK, so it's not the fridge or fishy tank... something else is def. killing you. Check the HT setup, maybe something is drawing 5-6A constantly...

I live alone in a 1600sq-ft house. I heat my bathroom and bedroom with electric heat. I have almost no CFL bulbs. Outside lights are a total of ~100W running dusk to dawn. I leave my 27" CRT TV on all night every night.

Also have an electric dryer, electric stove, electric tank water heater...

I only used 494kW last month... According to my bill my average is 550kW, with a peak in Sept 2012 of 880kW.

Something in your house is not playing nice, a kill-a-watt rotated around to the suspect appliances will find them in no time.