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Rising Electricity Use Mystery

R

rdandersom

Member
Mrs. just opened the electricity bill. After we both vented and ranted we looked closer. We used 2286 kilowatt hrs at a cost for electricity alone of 78.73 which amounts to a total of 433.20 by the time Hydro One delivered it into the house. The handy chart for comparing your use is in average use per day. We used 79kwh per day in January,52 in December and 17 in November. The list goes back 1 year and shows 48 last January. I have to think something is wrong. Does anybody have any suggestions where to look first? I wonder if it might be money well spent to get an electrician in.
 
Check your hot water heater sometimes the elements are bad. I seen one in a trailer the relief valve was stuck open and the hot water was running out the pipe underneath the trailer .
 
You might have power vampires. On a nice weekend when you two are both home......go out and watch the meter spinning for a few minutes. Now both of you need to go through every building the meter reads. Unplug or switch off EVERTYTHING you can find. When the mission is done then go look at the meter. Did it TOTALLY stop?????? Power vampires can be very hard to find. You might find stuff plugged in you don't even remember. Unhooking the breaker box is kinda worthless cause you need to go FIND the "LEAKS" Sounds silly but I kid you not! It will not be major stuff like the fridge, heater, normal lights on and off. It will be dumb stuff.
 
I would see how often they actually read the meter. Some family had trouble with billing and the call centre said the meter was read monthly, turns out it was only read annually!!!!! Some one squatted and used 6000$ of power in one winter but it took a year to find out about it. House was 4 hours drive away and had been closed up for 7 years.
 
Last January was quite mild, so your usage would have been less;could explain some of the discrepancy. Ben
 
Have been hearing the same such horror stories from other people. One friend up in BC has his rates ridiculously low (and in an old, drafty farmhouse) while his son's rates are through the roof (small, well-insulated home). The change happened after getting new "smart" meters installed. These so-called "smart" meters are anything but! If you have a smart meter, take your bills from past years and go to the power company.

Also, there are power usage devices that can read ALL electricity going into your house, and do it very accurately. Only problem is, they're not "smart" - therefore, you have to read them manually. :lol:

Ah, here it is. I wrote this post in another forum:
[i:f8002efca8][b:f8002efca8]If all else fails, there are ways to make your own electric meter or, with some of the new "smart" meters, to double check their accuracy. Look up "DIY electric usage meter" for ideas. Here's a couple I found:
https://www.howtogeek.com/93888/monitor-your-home-power-usage-by-building-a-diy-power-meter-reader/

This one sounds great!
http://www.billporter.info/2010/12/19/not-so-tiny-power-meter/

Another site with potential:
http://mapawatt.com/2010/09/06/diy-home-energy-monitoring-system/

If you can "prove" that their meter reading is faulty, you could get back quite a chunk of change! Better yet, meet with neighbors who are having the same problem and get some real multi-home feedback going![/b:f8002efca8][/i:f8002efca8][/i]
 
Might be worthwhile to buy some test equipment for this, you can use it on your tractors later! I have a clamp-on ammeter that works well, bought from HF for <$20. I personally have never used a Kill A Watt but I see Ace hardware has them for $25, if I thought I had excess usage I would have one. My Brother in law had an extra high bill once, his electrically heated driveway had been left on!
 
I think Kill A Watt is only for monitoring one outlet. Maybe they have something for a whole circuit (one breaker), but I don't think they have anything that can monitor all use through a meter.
 
if you have a heat pump check and see if your resistance heat is on every time the unit starts because a stuck relay can really run that bill up . I have found that before in peoples units .
 
First check your meter reading and compare it to your bill. Sometimes usage is only estimated and can be way off. If the meter reading is good, start looking for a short somewhere in your wiring or a refrigerator going bad.
 
Like has already been noted it could be a water heater thermostat stuck on, electric heat issues, stuck well control switch, or a bad underground wire even. I have heard quite a few complaints after the power company installs the "smart meters". Here is an article, but it's in Europe.
Europe electrical meter problem
 
I had a refrigerator/freezer that was working bad-the freezer self defrost was running all the time- part that heats the ice up to keep ice built up was bad.
 
If I had any suspicion of a bad appliance I would buy a Kill A Watt, We had a fridge that seemed to run all the time, so I
checked it out the hard way. I hooked an old electric clock up to it to see how much it ran, then took a load reading on it.
It was costing us over $300 a year we figured out, so we got a new one very soon. I think the new one was estimated to use $60
a year. When we moved the old one outside water ran out of the insulation for days, frozen condensation. When we tried to plug
it in again it wouldn't start, so it was on it's last leg.
 
These are all good ideas. Especially the part about shutting everything you believe is on and then check the meter to see if it is still running. I managed a small utility for 30+ years and only a couple times the problem was the meter. Most of the time we would help them track it down and there was several heat lamps in the dog houses or under the trailerhouse to keep pipes thawed. We found extention cords with bad insulation that were in partly buried and it bled energy but wasn't a direct short enough to trip fuse or breaker. Or they had vehicles plugged in 24 hours a day thinking once the motor is warm they shut off. They didn't have a clue that they turned on and off as needed. Had one guy that jumpered around the thermastat on an old 1500 watts tank type heater and left it plugged in all the time. Once we explained to him it was using 1.5 kilowats an hour x 24 hours = 36 kilowatts a day X 30 days. Makes the meter bill jump up quite a bit.
 
Get you a clamp type amp meter that reads AC/DC amps. Then clamp one of your incoming legs into your breaker box. Turn all your breakers off then your meter should not read anything. Turn one breaker on one at a time to see what's drawing the most and see what's all on that circuit. This should narrow it down where to look.
 
I know a guy who has a heat pump that has a backup electric heat system. During the coldest part of the winter, his heat pump failed and his house was heated with the backup electric heat. He didn't notice that his heat pump had failed until he got his electricity bill. The irony of all this is that this guy is a HVAC technician.
 
My uncles stopped at a house the owner mentioned that the air conditioner seem to be running alot. My uncle looked at the thermostat the air conditioner was set at 70 the furnace was 75 easy problem to solve. Its funny what happens when one thing works hard to correct a second problem.
 
It is possible your meter was curb read. Guy drives by your house and doesn't read your meter, just guesses. Then when someone actually reads your meter, sticker shock, you think you have a problem.

Recently Duke upgraded our meters to smart meters. No one comes to your house. Someway Duke reads your meter without using a person to read them.

Now some people are complaining about higher electric bills and the smart meters are accurate. I'm thinking some people had defective old meters that didn't measure all the electricity they were actually using.

As for a Kill-a-watt meter, mine only measures 120v, not 220v and measures a limited amount of current. Which isn't very accurate.

It's really simple, start shutting off breakers and see when your meter stops spinning. If all breakers are off and meter continues to spin, you have a problem.
 
I was a meter technician/supervisor for an electric co-op for thirty plus years, very rarely did I find a meter that was out of calibration by more than 1% plus or minus. I investigated probably hundreds of high usage complaints. Found calf warmers plugged in all the time, stock tank thermostats stuck on, milk house/space heaters on and forgotten about, antique deep freeze in basement running constantly, people using 2 or 3 amish heaters to heat their house in winter because they are advertised as more energy efficient than oil or lpg. Many other things I can't remember now. Moral is, majority of the time it is something besides the meter. The new (smart/digital) meters are all tested before installation, and are remarkably accurate in some cases more accurate than the equipment they are being tested on. If your meter still is the rotating disc type, you can tell your usage by using the Kh value printed on the meter, that is the watthours/per revolution of the disc. generally 7.2 watthours per revolution.
 
showcrop, I have seen that also, where submersible pump doesn't make quite enough pressure to trip pressure switch so it runs all the time.
 
funtwohunt mentioned extension cords... We have SEVERAL extension cords strung around the yard every day. Several tractors and trucks used consistently. Dad had a severely higher electric bill one month and after determining that it wasn't any of the cattle waterers or anything else, we eventually found a bad extension cord. It wasn't shorting out bad enough to trip the breaker. Since then we have found a couple other cords causing problems. Cords definitely don't last forever. BTW my brother is an electrician.. He understands why we do what we do but he absolutely hates extension cords.
 
Duke misread my meter a couple of months ago causing the bill to exceed the authorization limit that I set for automatic payment.

It took two months but I finally got things straightened out.

First time it's happened in decades.

Dean
 

Freezers with a stuck thermostat can operate 24/7.
I found a deep submersible well pump with welded together pressure switch contacts. System pressure had peaked at 80psi so nothing had ruptured.
24/7 furnace fans will use power.
Co worker years ago had a couple of high power bills. Finally noticed the snow melting and dripping off the kid's treehouse roof and investigated. The kids had ran an extension cord and heater then forgot about it.
 
(quoted from post at 16:47:42 03/04/17) Mrs. just opened the electricity bill. After we both vented and ranted we looked closer. We used 2286 kilowatt hrs at a cost for electricity alone of 78.73 which amounts to a total of 433.20 by the time Hydro One delivered it into the house. The handy chart for comparing your use is in average use per day. We used 79kwh per day in January,52 in December and 17 in November. The list goes back 1 year and shows 48 last January. I have to think something is wrong. Does anybody have any suggestions where to look first? I wonder if it might be money well spent to get an electrician in.
Click to expand...

Trade you, mine was $900.25 for 4992.4Kwh for an average of 146 Kwh per day.
 
Duke misread my meter a couple of months ago
It took two months but I finally got things straightened out.
Click to expand...

I signed up for auto payment of my gas bill. Being on the budget plan, I figured this was a no-brainer. Then I get an email from the gas company saying basically "There was no automatic payment taken this month because you have a balance in your account". No kidding, that is how the budget plan works, you overpay some months to make up for the bigger months. Apparently not if you try to have both.
 
I think the real source of your problem , can be traced back to a bankrupt utility and a corrupt gov. My Hydro bill is over $1200. each month , up 200 bucks from a year ago. Feel the burn !!! Still cheaper than going off the grid.
 
I will second that! Ours seem to keep going up, even though when the old lights burn out we replace them with energy efficient bulbs, we have one of those new meters that they can read off there computer. Years ago we had the old one and the meter guy would come out and look in it, dad would say he is here to speed it up some more! LOL
 
If you have a well, and pipe coming from that to your house, you could have a leaky pipe, and your pump is running a lot of the time. I had that problem last fall. If you have city water, disregard.
My usage has gone up a lot this winter also, but I am out in my shop every day with lights on, heating it, using power tools, and welding. Just our heating system will raise our usage a couple KWHs per day.
Don't forget all those gadgets that you have with embilical cords hooked to them also
Loren
 
This also will help in reducing your utility bill.
Install some heat traps on your water heater. Heat will not migrate downwards.
During no water flow the traps will prevent the heat from traveling up and dissipating into the attic.
a153359.jpg
 
I think the real source of your problem , can be traced back to a bankrupt utility and a corrupt gov. My [b:5088bb0066]Hydro bill is over $1200. each month[/b:5088bb0066] , up 200 bucks from a year ago.
Click to expand...

I'm sure yours will be dropping like a rock soon, with all the famous folks fleeing across the border to escape the tyrannical regime (as they claimed before the election).

You won't hear me complaining about my $241 budget payment each month...
 

Our illustrious leader of Ontario just signed more green energy contracts this week.
Now we will have more unneeded off peak electricity that we have to pay 13.5 cents ,17 cents or 40.2 cents for instead of 5 or 6 cents from hydraulic or nuclear.
Then turn around and pay NY or Michigan to take the power.
Have to wonder if there are some Cayman Island bank accounts involved ?
 
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