Need help...electric bill is out of control!

[kifl1981]

My average electric bill is $300 per month, which is ridiculous considering that my home is less than 1,600 square feet. I have already switched all the lightbulbs to the CFL type. I'm wondering if you all could help me figure out some other ways I can get the bill down. It's making us about $100 in the hole each month!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

[amyschiff]

Unplugging electric items you don't need can help. A lot of appliances still use power when they're turned off. Running a clothes dryer can also suck energy--hang dry what you can. Try using fans instead of air conditioning (if you have it) and just be mindful of having lights turned on. A programmable thermostat could help too.

[SouthShoreGirl]

Also look into getting on balanced billing. It can make your payments less each month, although the last bill of the year could be higher. Is anything else considered part of your electric bill? I see this happening with some of my clients at work (I'm a social worker). Some of them have things like heat figured in which makes it much more expensive. I also would have the electric company do a "check" at your house to make sure you are being properly charged.

[hermione]

$300 is really high; do you have an A/C running year-round? If not, I would do a check around the whole house and garage to see if there's some energy-sucker plugged in somewhere that you don't need.

My house is 1,300 sq. feet and our average electric bill is around $45. If we run our central A/C during the summer (we live in the desert), it's $100-$300 depending on the month, but otherwise, it shouldn't be that high. Not all our bulbs are CFL because we have some lights that don't fit them, we have a big light outside the garage that comes on every night, and we often have our computers on almost all day and night and TV on for several hours at night.

Also, do you have Energy Star appliances - refrigerator, TV, etc.?

[livinn59801]

Try using a Kill-A-Wat around your house. They are cheap and I've heard lots of good things about them. I plan on buying one myself and posting the results from my rental on my blog. Here is a link to them on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/P3-Internation...6938286&sr=8-1

[BGMeyer]

You might also take to the electric company. Sometime they do audits and have other suggestions that might bring your bill down a bit.
barb

[Philip Brewer]

Do you know how you're using all that power? That's such a high bill (10x my power bill, for example), that it suggests something odd is going on. (Of course, if you run the AC all the time, live someplace hot, and have poor insulation, that could do it too. And, some places the electricity is more expensive than here, so that could be part of it.)

The suggestions above are all worth looking into--unplug adapters (cell phone chargers, etc.) when they're not in use, put your TV and stereo on a powerstrip and shut the whole system down, etc. Check the energy ratings of your appliances--a new, energy efficient refrigerator can save enough energy to recover the expense in a reasonable amount of time. Obviously, turn off stuff you're not using.

But if all that stuff is under control and your bill is still really high, talking to the power company is a good idea. Not only can they do energy audit type stuff, they'd also be the people who could figure out, for example, if someone else was using power that went through your meter. (I knew a guy who discovered that half the sockets in his downstairs neighbor's apartment were drawn off his meter rather than his neighbor's, due to a long-standing wiring mistake. Discovered by unplugging everything in the apartment and observing that the meter keep turning.)

[maeleine]

I believe that there's a period for contesting the conclusiveness of an electrical billing if you believe that it's not accurate. Otherwise, you forfeit your chance to contest it. Also, check your major appliances, maybe some of them are not efficient anymore, thus the sudden power consumption increase.

[walletwise]

One thing you could do is buy a draft guard for your doors. We bought one for our front door near the end of winter and immediately noticed not only a difference in the temperature of the house, but also a slightly lower electric bill. Now that it's summer, we still haven't seen a huge increase even though we run the AC all the time. It really does trap the air inside, and the draft guards are only like 10 dollars.

Also, lowering your AC by 1 degree will save you 3% on your electric bill each DAY.

[kifl1981]

Well, unfortunately for me, I live in FL where the AC runs at least 5 or 6 months out of the year...and one of the rooms in the house has poor insulation. But still, I just wish there were a way to get it lower, but maybe there isn't.

We keep the thermostat at 78 in the summer.