We’ve had huge electrical bills since we’ve moved to the new house. Now I know it was the summer, but still, we’re not air conditioning nuts – well I am perhaps, but my wife reigns me in and typically makes me set the thermostat to 80 degrees Fahrenheit (around 27 degrees Celsius to my non-American readers).
We’ve been using 1100+ kilowatt-hours per month, which seems like a lot to me. I’ve looked at our meter and ours is moving considerably faster than the other two units in our building. This is with no air conditioning, no washer or dryer, no vacuums or hair dryers, etc. I tried selectively shutting off a few circuits and the refrigerator (a modern 25.3 cu. ft. KitchenAid which I would imagine to be fairly efficient for its size) probably made the biggest difference, but still, I’d be rather surprised if any of my neighbors don’t have comparable refrigerators.
On the hand, I took meter readings 329 minutes apart and found that we only used 3 kilowatt-hours (kW·h). If my math is correct, then at that rate we’d use 13 kW·h per day and 394 kW·h per month; much better than the 1100+ on our last bill. So perhaps our central air conditioning was indeed the culprit. It never worked super well, so maybe there is some efficiency-killing problem in our ductwork or in the evaporator coil up in the attic.
What is your typical electricity usage? If you have central air conditioning, how does it affect your usage?