$500 for 5 months electric bill. Is that high? (Seattle, Duvall: apartment, appliances)

[semidevil]

We moved to Seattle about 5 months ago and signed up with Seattle City lights. However, since they were busy, they were not able to do a meter reading until just now. The result is that I received an electric bill for $500 for 5 months.

I have heard from a lot of people that "Electricity is cheap here", so I was a bit surprised by the bill. It's comparable to heating my 1600 sqft apt in another state.

I live in only a 700sqft apartment, and the bill said I used about 5000kWh. The last 2 months, we did use the heater during the day, but according to my bill, even my "Summer residential Energy" is $170. We dont even have A/C, so I'm not sure what could cause our energy bill to spike during the summer.

Does my bill seem a bit higher than expected? Anything I can do? Since it's one bill, I can't really track month by month

[GraceKrispy]

Sounds somewhat comparable to mine, but actually a little less than I pay over 5 months (1100 ft apartment).

Electricity is way cheaper here than it was for me in Hawai'i (no heat, no a/c, $250-400 monthly bills).

[RotseCherut]

Electricity is cheap here? WOW... I must be sleeping , not awake and reading this..

$500 for 5 months is dirt cheap for a 700 sq ft apartment.. I paid $160 to heat my 500 sq ft closet in Ballard during the month of Feburary. That was February, not even January. Just paid $200 this month to heat my one-level 1300 sq foot home in the South Sound through Puget Sound Energy. That was much cheaper than the $500 bill I had from them to heat my multi-level 1600 sq ft house in Duvall for the month of January.

When I was in Idaho it didn't even get up to 10F for the entire month of January and my heating bill for a 2 story 1600 sq ft was about $100 that month. That was using gas, so not 100% fair comparison. However, I also had a central A/C system and cooled that entire house during months where it didn't get under 100F for over a week.. My cooling bill was only $70 or so. That would have been like $300 in Washington state.


Welcome to Western Washington.. Utilities are high here

[Diana Holbrook]

We pay almost that ($450) for one month during the coldest part of winter, but that is for our house, farm and our rented apartment, which is roughly the same size as yours. .

[drshang]

Seems high to me...we have a 1800sqft townhouse that uses around 20 kWh per day over a two year period, including summer and winter. $65-70 month average for electric. We also have a gas bill that is $12-13 per month and basically never fluctuates. Usage isn't that much different in summer and winter, and we have minisplit AC/heat that runs at a set temperature. To be fair, this place is only a few years old and has pretty energy efficient stuff, but one person also works at home all day so it is not as if the place is unoccupied. The kWh rate here is about half of that of Los Angeles where we used to live, and SCL has one of the lower rates in the entire country.

[Ruth4Truth]

OP, don't forget, there was probably a "new account" fee contributing to that high initial bill. Where I live (no longer in WA), the new account set-up fee can be as high as $100. That might mean that your monthly electrical usage was $80, which isn't bad. Call City Light to ask if there was a set-up fee involved in your bill.

Some utilities also charge customers for a "last month" of usage, so that when the customer moves out, they're automatically paid up. IOW they can't leave the utility in the lurch for their final month. Like first-and-last-month's-rent, at move-in. So that's another thing to ask about, too.

[homesinseattle]

Yeah, that's pretty reasonable. Electrical costs a fair amount more in many other parts of the country. Keep in mind that this cost is probably ALL of your electrical: heat, lights, outlets, maybe even hot water (if you don't have gas service).

[strad]

These threads always surprise me. I live in a 700 sq ft apartment in lower Queen Anne, all my appliances are electric, and our electric bill is usually around $26 per month. We don't have AC and fortunately rarely have to turn on the heat, so the highest bill I remember was like $80, billed for two months of service, one particularly cold winter month :-/

[StealthRabbit]

You are about correct ($100 / month during west side winter in Seattle metro)
Seattle Electric rates are very high (for WA). 8.85 cents / KW (lowest state average in USA, but some of WA is (was) DIRT cheap! ~2.3 cents / KW used to be the norm. at a time we were 1.8... THEN our utility build a NG turbine (WA has to IMPORT NG )

Cheap rates? head east! (within WA) Rural eastern WA even has INTERNET !!!! (fiber no less)

[homelessinseattle]

Thank you for helping fund my retirement.