Electric Bill kWh usage is double what I usually use in new apt
I moved in mid April to a new apartment. All of my personal appliances are the exact same. Square footage in apt is almost identical. We have not installed our AC units yet– However our kWh is saying we use over 300-400 kWh per month! Over the past 2 years we’ve used on average 175 kWh during this time of year. We are out at work almost all day 5 days a week. We pay for our hot water- but those charges are with National Grid. Is my fridge/dishwasher in this apt sucking excess electricity? Why is it so high? I’ve never paid over $100 during this time a year without running an AC.
Should I hire an electrician to come and measure all my usage to see where the spike is coming from? Anyone have any ideas what it could be?
Thanks in advance!
shribanke
in General Discussion 5 years and 11 months ago
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shribanke
in General Discussion 5 years and 11 months ago
I’ll keep you posted.
I know about the vampire appliances- but my personal ones are the same. That’s what’s leading me to believe it’s whatever was already in the apartment that is either inefficient or rigged or wired wrong.
Arkady | 5 years and 11 months ago
Please update us when you learn what was going on.
shahnandersen
in General Discussion 5 years and 11 months ago
Just remember that there are a lot of vampire devices that use electricity when they are off such as the TV, DVR,Microwave oven, gas stove, etc. They all have to be unplugged.
GreenThinker | 5 years and 11 months ago
Just checked mine, on the lower left side of the screen, it says delivered and there’s a triangle symbol that beeps on and off, if you don’t see the triangle beeping, then nothing is drawing a current.
shribanke
in General Discussion 5 years and 11 months ago
Thats what I thought about my digital meter. That it would zero out while nothing was in use- but the numbers stayed on. Not sure how many hrs I should have waited with everything shut down to see if the numbers don’t go up.
shribanke
in General Discussion 5 years and 11 months ago
Thats what I thought about my digital meter. That it would zero out while nothing was in use- but the numbers stayed on. Not sure how many hrs I should have waited with everything shut down to see if the numbers don’t go up.
GreenThinker | 5 years and 11 months ago
If you have a analog meter there’s a spinning disk inside it, if it stops spinning, that means no electricity is being used… If it’s a digital meter, there are 3 bars on the right side that light up one after the other if anything is being used, if theres no bars, everything is off.
shribanke
in General Discussion 5 years and 11 months ago
Alright… I talked to CONed again… they recommend getting an electrician over here to check out what’s doing the damage and to check out the wiring of the apt. He said that maybe faulty wiring could be generating more electricity than we are using….
On another note, we moved our fridge and there was tons of dust on the coils which we’ve cleaned. Maybe this will help?
shribanke
in General Discussion 5 years and 11 months ago
Alright… I talked to CONed again… they recommend getting an electrician over here to check out what’s doing the damage and to check out the wiring of the apt. He said that maybe faulty wiring could be generating more electricity than we are using….
On another note, we moved our fridge and there was tons of dust on the coils which we’ve cleaned. Maybe this will help?
JohnHancock | 5 years and 11 months ago
Lol
shribanke
in General Discussion 5 years and 11 months ago
How long do I need to wait to see a difference in a meter? I’m here sitting in the dark..
shribanke
in General Discussion 5 years and 11 months ago
How long do I need to wait to see a difference in a meter? I’m here sitting in the dark..
JohnHancock | 5 years and 11 months ago
Maybe you are paying for someone else’s electricity if this is an apartment building. Who knows what wired I to your panel from outside your apartment
Guest User | 5 years and 11 months ago
If you’ve turned off the majority of your electricity using appliances and see no difference then your meter is not hooked up to your apartment – you’re paying someone else’s bill. This happened in our building: the meters were not assigned properly. We ended up having paid our neighbors bill for the better part of a year, and they ours. Had to get Con-Ed involved to get it properly sorted.
shribanke
in General Discussion 5 years and 11 months ago
Anyone know what kh could be?
shribanke
in General Discussion 5 years and 11 months ago
Anyone know what kh could be?
shribanke
in General Discussion 5 years and 11 months ago
Here’s a photo of our circuit breaker. We unplugged the majority of our appliances and the meter reading has not changed. [B5A0AC41-3C06-4FC2-B64E-9BEB7EDBC272](b5a0ac413c064fc2b64e9beb7edbc272.jpeg)
shribanke
in General Discussion 5 years and 11 months ago
Here’s a photo of our circuit breaker. We unplugged the majority of our appliances and the meter reading has not changed. [B5A0AC41-3C06-4FC2-B64E-9BEB7EDBC272](b5a0ac413c064fc2b64e9beb7edbc272.jpeg)
brokelin | 5 years and 11 months ago
I had this same problem once. When I called ConEd to complain about it, the woman who answered the phone knew what it was – she told me to go check my refrigerator and see if it had water inside – she said that if the refrigerator was failing, it would draw a lot of electricity to try to keep the temperature inside cool. She was right.
Now, this was 25 years ago, and the refrigerator was a really old landlord special – I seem to remember that it might have been one with the freezer inside the fridge, the old kind with only one door – I don’t exactly recall. But indeed there was water on the bottom of the inside that I had to sponge out constantly, until my landlords got me a new one when I complained about the electric bills it was causing me. And with the new fridge, the bill went right down back to what it always had been for the stuff I have.
Now, with a newer refrigerator, as yours sounds like it is, you probably won’t have water inside. I had one with a separate freezer on the bottom fail a few years ago – there was no water inside, and I honestly don’t re member if I noticed my electric bill changing before it died. But I’d start there. See if your fridge keeps things cold at the recommended start setting. See if it is old – you can find the serial number on it and look it up online to see if when it was made. The useful life of modern refrigerators is only something like 12-15 years. I may have had higher electric bills with it the whole time I had it – it was failing long before I realized it – when the new one (of basically the same model by the same manufacturer – my landlord liked Sears Kenmore) kept food much colder and fresher longer, I realized the old one hadn’t been working well for a long time, perhaps ever since I moved into that apartment a few years earlier.
Also, I once bought a place with a fridge that my housepainter saw the week I moved in and immediately said – that’s going to be an electricity hog – and it turned out, he was right – my electricity in that place cost a bunch more (not double though) than it ever had before, with no other differences – it wasn’t a big fridge, or a fancy one with an ice maker or anything that could be called a feature – my painter just must have had experience with one just like it before, and knew it wasn’t very energy efficient. You can also look up the energy efficiency rating of the fridge – it could use a lot more energy than the ones you had before. But even if so, it also might be failing and need replacing. Good luck.