Very high electricity bill for 1000 sq ft apartment (live, usage)

[Willsson]

sunset_orange, you say in a loft... same as I asked the OP, do you have external walls that face the sun? Do you have windows that face the sun? Most apartment windows are not high efficiency windows, typically a single pane that will radiate heat. Do you leave window shades or curtains open while you're away? Just closing blinds or curtains will slow that radiant heat. And the AC doesn't care where the heat comes from, it's just going to cool.

[piyf]

Deregulation is the problem. I lived in El Paso and I was paying less than 8 cents per kWh. All these companies (most of them) is buy electricity and sell it, paper trading.


Deregulation is fleecing the public.

[sunset_orange]

Originally Posted by tofurkey

sunset_orange, you say in a loft... same as I asked the OP, do you have external walls that face the sun? Do you have windows that face the sun? Most apartment windows are not high efficiency windows, typically a single pane that will radiate heat. Do you leave window shades or curtains open while you're away? Just closing blinds or curtains will slow that radiant heat. And the AC doesn't care where the heat comes from, it's just going to cool.

I don't face the sun directly - my apt windows face south, so the sun passes over top of my building from east/west. There is no sun beaming in through my windows (of which there are 10 spanning 2 levels). I keep the blinds closed at all times. The unit itself has 2 external walls (as my apt entrance is from an open hallway, and the windows face the courtyard), and 2 'protected' walls. During the week I am not in my apartment during daylight hours, so would not have any reason to keep the AC on very high.

I am very frustrated by the whole electricity deregulation here, as I come from somewhere where there is one power company that has government regulation! Also, I never dreamed of budgeting near $300 for a power bill.

[lh_newbie]

$300 at 9.2 cents/kwH is well over 3,000 KwH per month. Deregulation isn't your issue - overall energy usage is. As I've stated above, we have over 2x the home you have, it's older, some windows are single pane (and face South) and since it's a single family home, all our walls are exterior walls... and we STILL use a peak month of 1850 KwH. In June, we used 1453; july was 1566 and aug 1862, for bills of $175, $188 and $221. Clearly, to me, there is something going on with either poor construction, poor design, or you're neighbor is tapped into your meter...

[sunset_orange]

Originally Posted by lh_newbie

$300 at 9.2 cents/kwH is well over 3,000 KwH per month. Deregulation isn't your issue - overall energy usage is. As I've stated above, we have over 2x the home you have, it's older, some windows are single pane (and face South) and since it's a single family home, all our walls are exterior walls... and we STILL use a peak month of 1850 KwH. In June, we used 1453; july was 1566 and aug 1862, for bills of $175, $188 and $221. Clearly, to me, there is something going on with either poor construction, poor design, or you're neighbor is tapped into your meter...

Thanks - I agree, I do think that something is not quite right with the math on it all, which is why I feel so helpless! I just put in a service request to my building to have them check my apartment and see if there is something that i can do to have lower bills!

[Willsson]

sunset_orange, when you view your smartmeter graph, is there a line that remains fairly constant during the day, or bounces between 0.1 and 0.5 during the day then jumps up to somewhere in the 0.2 to 0.8 or 1.0 range when you get home? Or higher?

De-regulation is not your problem. It just gets really really hot in Texas. That's why there are so many posts on C-D about the heat. You have a good rate. Really. They'll charge a set amount for the first thousand KwH then an adjusted amount for the next thousand KwH. That should be detailed on your bill, whether online or a paper statement. My latest bill was about 10 cents KwH for the first thou then 9.6 cents for the next 700+. Like lh_newbie, my house is older with single pane windows. The only shade I have is in the a.m. I did discover that when the AC was running it was sucking in outside air thru the double hung windows. And regardless of the direction, the panes do radiate heat.

I did have a couple of vents that were blowing hot and I thought that was due to tears or leaks in the plenum (where the AC meets the air conduits), which I did find to be loose. There were no tears and I did seal the plenum leaks. Most critical though, my AC was low on freon. I had it amped up and now all vents blow exceedingly cool.

Apartments have all sorts of loose places where tings can rattle and air flow through. Particularly doors and windows. The slightest crack will have the AC pulling in hot air.

[asubram3]

Did anyone else have my experience of electricity charges going up in winter months. I moved here last year, and my summer charges were ~$ 60 per month. It went down towards October, but then shot up to $110 from December to February. I don't like cold, and did set the heater to 72F, but is this reasonable?

[lh_newbie]

Originally Posted by asubram3

Did anyone else have my experience of electricity charges going up in winter months. I moved here last year, and my summer charges were ~$ 60 per month. It went down towards October, but then shot up to $110 from December to February. I don't like cold, and did set the heater to 72F, but is this reasonable?

Electric resistive heat, typical for an apartment, will be substantially higher than your cooling bills. It costs a lot more for either gas to be run to a gas furnace or to have a heat pump installed. For this cost reason, apartments (and less expensive homes) typically get resistive heat. It's a hidden cost of many, many apartments.

Brian

[sunset_orange]

tofurkey, My smartmeter seems to reflect my activity for the most part - during the night it is either a fairly flat line or has small spikes to 0.5 (presumably hotter nights when AC might kick in once an hour, I'm not sure since I'm dead asleep!), there is a spike to about 2kwh when I get ready for work (shower, hair dryer, kettle), then it is a low flat line again (0.2-0.5 range) until the mid/late-afternoon (2-4pm) when it starts to spike (to like 1.5-2kwh, even though I'm not home), and stays up there until I get home in the early evening(when there is not too much change in usage; I literally have like 1-2 lights on at any time, and the tv is about the only thing that uses power otherwise). So when I'm home it clocks about 1-2 kwh.

Overall in September my usage has been lower than August (when it was registering about 150-200kwh/day; whereas now I hover around 50) -- in part due to the cooler temps and the fact that my shocker of a bill prompted me to change daytime temps to 84 or so, and keep my apartment warmer overall (I have a programmable thermostat).

I'm anticipating a more reasonable bill this coming month as I've made a huge effort to minimize electricity use (despite barely using any form of electricity other than AC-related last month!). I also await to see what my building maintenance people have to say about my apartment and whether there is anything I can improve. I just wondered how I was being charged so much as I had read many of the other posts regarding electricity, and the overwhelming response to my bill from others (including co-workers, and my leasing office in the building!) was that my bill was quite high considering the size of my apartment and the fact that I'm rarely home!

thanks to all for the help/suggestions!

[jonnyald]

somebody above mentions others tapping into your meter/supply

over the years i have heard of this 3times ,where a neighbour has tapped a wire into somebody elses home and is drawing power from them . often its only discovered after they have long since moved away . i would switch off all your appliances and check the meter reading .then leave it off as long as possible while checking the meter -it should show no movement