Why has my electricity bill doubled? [duplicate]

This happened to me numerous years ago - my bill went from $135 one month to $300 or so the next month. Just by pure luck in trying to determine what was wrong, I went into my attic and found that a air vent had come loose and was happily streaming cold air straight into the 100+ degree attic. I fixed that, and the next bill was back to normal.

You need to take a close look at your electricity rates and how it works with your electric bill. Start by reviewing the last 6 months' bills. First, read the bill carefully. Then, compare the number of kilowatt-hours used with how much the bill amount is.

Special rate plans

If the kilowatt-hours stay proportional to the total bill, then you are using more electricity.

If the bill goes up a lot more than the kilowatt-hours, then you are on some sort of "rate plan" that punishes peak usage. That is done because peak usage is the most expensive for the power company to produce: they have to spin up power plants that don't get used all year except for this. (And the bank wants the mortgage paid all year).

Additional usage

The #1 reason for usage to go up "in the last few months" (read: summer) is air conditioning usage. Air conditioners are big users of electricity, and they run quite a lot.

If that does not explain it, look for problems that would cause energy use. If your water heater is electric, you may have a hot water leak.

You can read up on methods for using your electric meter as a load rate measuring device. That will let you observe rate of electricity use when various appliances are operating. You can also shut off loads at the breaker panel for testing, to see the effect it has.

If you want to really automate it, you can get products like the "Sense". They involve equipment that sits in your service panel and collects data about usage of many appliances. You can then generate reports showing which equipment is using how much power.

The electric sourcing utility that you are attached to may have increased your electrical usage rate so you might have to factor that into any cost investigation that you do.

The key starting place is to investigate the kilowatt-hour consumption that you have made in the last few months since your total bill has been going up. You need to evaluate this so that you have a baseline understanding of what you are paying per kilowatt-hour of usage. In addition this consumption data should help to correlate to the total bill increases and your average usage per day. You may also want to record readings from your electrical meter on a daily basis for 10 days or so. This will give you additional current state usage data.

Once you understand the usage per day it is time for you to start experimenting with turning off various appliances for a day or two and monitor how your power meter readings change as a result. This will lead to gaining an understanding as to what appliances are the ones contributing the most to the daily consumption.

For some appliances that you would not want to turn off for one or two days you can acquire an electrical monitoring meter, such as the popular "Kill A Watt" unit. These plug into the circuit between the appliance cord and the mating outlet. They can measure the voltage, amperage of current flow and compute the kilowatt-hour usage by the particular appliance plugged into the monitoring device.

With the time of year being what it is, I have to ask - what about your air conditioning use? My electricity consumption rises about 60% in the summer, peaking in August. In the winter, my natural gas roughly doubles. This is because of heating and cooling costs.

Also, clogged air filters can really impact the energy efficiency of your AC. I clean mine weekly because I have a cat that never stops shedding. The same is true for the intake at the back of your fridge, although I'll admit it only gets cleaned annually at my house.

Icemakers can also be huge power hogs if you're using them all the time.