Why are my gas & electric bills so damn high here in STL versus my electric bill in California?? (Maplewood: flat fee, apartment)

[CamelJockey]

I've been living in Saint Louis for several months now, moved here in mid-April from Long Beach, CA. In Long Beach I lived in a one-bedroom apartment and only had electricity, and my bill was never over $30 in the 7 years I lived there. I lived closed to the beach so no need for AC

But here in Saint Louis, I have the same-size apartment but I have electric & gas (stove is gas). I barely used the AC in the summer, haven't even turned on the heat yet. But pretty much same usage as when I lived in Cali, but my bills are so much higher! I expected my electric bill to be so much cheaper since now the stove uses gas, but my electric is around $30 to $40, and so is my gas bill!

So I went from paying $25 to $30 with just electric in California, to $70 - $80 with gas & electric here in Saint Louis. This makes no sense!!

[billiken]

Not that this is a huge help, but are you sure your usage is actually pretty much the same? Because electric rates are actually lower here than where you're from, just based on a quick look at Southern California Edison vs Ameren MO. Not sure what the differences are in the base service fees. I'm not as familiar with the gas rates so I won't comment there. I'd imagine you'd save a little money with electric-only places because you wouldn't be paying the flat service fees for both.

Also, are you set up for budget billing perhaps, and being billed based on expected usage that was kind of established by previous tenants?

[flynavyj]

I didn't think they'd budget based on previous tenants, but it's possible. Just wait till you purchase a home, use the A/C on a regular basis, and start seeing $200-300 electric bills in a month...then it just switches to a super high gas bill in the winter as you heat your home...Even living in Missouri during college, I never saw an electric bill that was $30 or $40...we always averaged in the $100 range, and this was a decade ago, honestly I'm pretty impressed with your current bill.

[RichMonk]

There are a lot of factors that can go into usage...

Does your new place use efficient appliances? What about the light bulbs, are they LED, CFLs or incandescent?

Are there external lights that your landlord might have tied to your meter?

[Sundaydrive00]

Originally Posted by flynavyj

Even living in Missouri during college, I never saw an electric bill that was $30 or $40...we always averaged in the $100 range, and this was a decade ago, honestly I'm pretty impressed with your current bill.

The highest are electric bill has ever been is $96, and that was because our a/c was messed up.

Otherwise our electric is usually $70ish in the summer, $25-$35 in spring/fall and about $50 in the winter. Gas is around $35 all year, except for in the winter where its around $50.

We live in a one bedroom apartment that's probably around 750 sq ft.

I can't remember if our electric was more or less in California. The bills for rent, electric, sewer, trash, and water were all bundled into one.

Although we don't pay for sewer, trash, or water here, so that makes our bills cheaper in St Louis compared to California (bay area).

[PacoMartin]

(1) If your fridge was made before 2001, then it could be part of your problem. The best modern models use less than half of what 1993-2000 fridges used. For older fridges it's even more striking.
(2) If you go online you can usually get a day by day readout of your electricity usage, sometimes even hour by hour. Find out what your usage is when you are not home.
(3) Some places have large monthly fees. This fee would apply even if you didn't use a single watt of electricity. What is yours?
(4) Are you paying for electricity not going to your apartment? Sometimes when you are not home you might want to throw the main circuit breaker (protect your food in ice). See if the neighbor is complaining about losing power or some public lights don't work.
(5) Dehumidifiers are big power hogs. Are you running one?
(6) Get a kill-a-watt meter and test some of your appliances. Do an audit of the things you use and look for the source of the problem.

[JetAgeHobo]

Look at your bills, Amren UE charges a 25 dollar connection fee every month for electric, and some sort of connection fee every month for gas. I could be wrong about the amount of the connection fee, but your Amren bill will never be below 50 bucks even if you don't use a bit of electricity or gas. The connection fee is just for the privilege of being connected to their service every month.

Socal Edison just charges for electricity and taxes, no special connection fees. I live in Santa Barbara area and my electric bill was never over 40 bucks, even in winter, in an all-electric apartment.

[marigolds6]

Originally Posted by flynavyj

I didn't think they'd budget based on previous tenants, but it's possible.

That's exactly what Ameren does. We ran into that when we first moved to St Louis. We actually moved into a duplex that was previously billed as the entire house, and got whomped by budget billing so badly in the first three months (after which we turned it off) that we had a credit big enough to pay the next nine months and still had some left over when we moved out.

[Sundaydrive00]

Originally Posted by JetAgeHobo

Look at your bills, Amren UE charges a 25 dollar connection fee every month for electric, and some sort of connection fee every month for gas. I could be wrong about the amount of the connection fee, but your Amren bill will never be below 50 bucks even if you don't use a bit of electricity or gas. The connection fee is just for the privilege of being connected to their service every month.

Thats not true. I've had a number of bills from Ameren that were only $20. The only additional charges on my bill are a fuel adjustment charge ($1.32), Energy efficiency adjustment charge ($0.97), and a Maplewood Municipality charge ($3.28).

Now Laclede Gas does have a "customer charge" of 19.50. So while I only used $6.33 worth of gas last month, my bill was just over $30 after the Maplewood tax.

Laclede also charges a "service initiation" charge for new customers. I think it was like $20-$30, but the charges were spread out over multiple bills.

[billiken]

Yeah, the flat fee for Ameren is nowhere near $25....it's $8. If you want to see what your exact charges should be for service, see the following: https://ameren.com/-/media/missouri-...4Rate1MRES.pdf

That PDF does not include the "riders" which are extra and vary. Fuel adjustment charge is one of the riders.
https://ameren.com/missouri/rates/el...service-bundle