electricity

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

out of curiosity, would anyone like to share their high/low electric bills?

i'm in a one level 3 bedroom with typically only two people home and probably one or two nights of a/c in one of the bedrooms last month, and i think our bill is outrageous (over $400). we do have a washer/dryer (new front loading high efficiency ones) but that is not new and our bill seems to continually increase.

just wondering if this really is out of the norm before i have a talk with my roommate, see the actual bill*, and maybe call the electric company.

thanks!
eta: thanks SO much for all the feedback you guys - i've never had to deal with this before so i appreciate all the things to check for (rather than just nstar screwing us for the hell of it or my roommate being shady).

*i realize those two factors could mean a lot of different things going on here, but i'd still like to get an idea of 'average' in the area :) i know you can also call and get highest/lowest bills for previous tenants, but that actually hasn't proved very useful in the past.

Comments

[808.livejournal.com]

Every electric bill I've received shows you your prior monthly usage for the last 12 months, so you can compare your current month to the same month a year ago. The important thing is to compare usage, not cost, because electricity costs continually rise now that it's deregulated. Nothing we can do about that. FWIW, my 2BR with 4 people on the 3rd floor of a 120-year old house (me, wife, 2 family members and 2 cats!) was $80 last month. That's no AC, only laptops, lots of fans and a washer but no dryer.

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

yeah, i was only curious about cost in the meantime because i can't get my paws on the actual bill right now, so it's kind of the only variable i have to work with. shana has a good point though, i should figure out square footage since 3 bedroom can be huge or tiny, relevant if people are running a/c, etc.

Square Footage?

[shana-lyons.livejournal.com]

Sure, we'll share. This should be interesting. We have a two-level 3br/2ba with two people and central whole-house A/C, washer, dryer, etc and our bill last month was $120. It ranges from $75 or so in the winter (gas heat, hot water, and cooking) to $250 in August if we're really cranking the AC.

Do you have any idea what the square footage of your apartment is? Ours is like 1650.

$400 seems high if that's for one month.

Re: Square Footage?

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

i'll see if i can find out somehow since i don't know off the top of my head. i can say that my room is the smallest, enough room for a bed/dresser/bookcase and not much else. the middle bedroom is a tiny bit bigger, and the largest bedroom is unoccupied since one of my roommates is moving out and has basically been living w/ his girlfriend.

when i lived in quincy in a two bedroom it was a bit smaller than this (obviously) but we also had central air that we used pretty consistently and the only time our bill was this high was when i hadn't paid it in months.

[wheeiminvisible.livejournal.com]

I live with two other people in about 700 sq feet. Our bill in the summer (no AC) is usually between $35-$45.

[wickedtrue.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sounds like a lot. Do you have several a/cs going constantly?

We have a a two level 3br with 3 people, and our electric bill is normally between $50 - $85, and that's with an a/c. We do have a lot of energy efficient appliances and all our lights have the low watt bulbs, but even before we did the switch over, our electric bill never got over $100.

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

no. my roommate is the only one with an a/c in his bedroom and he used it for maybe a couple days/nights (given this bill doesn't count for the recent crazy hot spell).

we have one small window fan in the living room and i have one wimpy stand up type fan in my bedroom.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

we have a 3 bedroom, one room currently empty, ac in one room, no washer/dryer, but two computer nerd nightowls. Our bill ending June 22 was $45.62

[ericjay.livejournal.com]

I'm in a 3-bedroom, second floor unit w/ central AC (that we use regularly, but keep set on 76° and our most recent electric bill was $59. My last apartment was a large 2 bedroom with two window AC units going fairly regularly. Our highest electric bill last summer was $87. I can't possibly imagine what you're using that would add up to $400/month worth of electricity!

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

yeah, this seems to be the general consensus (i asked in my personal journal as well) :/ now all that remains is to get to the bottom of it, and i'm not terribly looking forward to it...

[lunarcamel.livejournal.com]

Possibly unhelpful: Our electric bill was crazy high and it turned out we were paying for the lights in the common areas (we discovered this when we blew a fuse in our apartment and the lights in the basement weren't working either). That's super duper illegal and our landlord ended up owing us a few G's, so I hope for your sake it's something awesome like that.

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

our set up is is a two family house i guess you would say, where we have the top half & attic and our neighbor has the bottom half and basement. we do have a porch light though that's been on more since they've moved in and i'm not sure how that works, but even still probably doesn't explain everything. sigh!

[kalibex.livejournal.com]

Any possibility that someone's stealing electricity from you guys?

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

i'm not sure. i just googled it (i've heard of it but wasn't sure how you'd even do it) and it looks like no matter what i'll have to be calling our electric company to get to the bottom of this.

$400 is way too high

[wardv.livejournal.com]

2 BR condo here, three people, about 1000 sq ft. Last month was about $85 - don't think we used the A/C at all in that period. This includes an electric water heater, which I suspect to be responsible for a good fraction of that cost.

If this jump was sudden, you could have a malfunctioning device (electric water heater?)...

Re: $400 is way too high

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

it was similar the month before, but i think if i recall correctly it was more reasonable prior to that, so that is a possibility, thanks!

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I have a big 2br, about 1600 sq ft, 3rd floor, been running window AC almost around the clock on hot days (bedroom at night, office in the day-- I work from home). I have a desktop computer and a Tivo that are both on 24/7, plus a big TV that I watch a few hours a day on average. I also run the dishwasher about once a week or so. My electric bill for June 22 was the highest it's been since I moved here in September, and it's only $65.82 (370 KWH, for 33 days).

I don't have a washer/dryer in the unit, and almost all the lights are fluorescent. Still, I'd say $400/month is well out of the norm.

Might there be something wrong with the refrigerator? Have you noticed it running more often than usual?

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

then i'd better go catch it i suppose...

heh. but no, not in particular, tho as mentioned above it could be another appliance too.

[bettyw.livejournal.com]

What kind of electric meter do you have - is it wirelessly read by the passing meter truck, or is it an old analog one that someone has to visually read? Is there a possibility that the meter was recently changed out for a new one?

- Sometimes when they switch meters, the reading gets messes up.
- If it's a manual read one, if they've been estimating for some months and then get a real reading, it can turn out they were underestimating for a long time so they "catch up".
- I once received a bill for several THOUSAND dollars on a meter for an office I use so rarely that I do not use 1 kilowatt in a month; turned out they had read the meter wrong, so it looked like it had gone totally around the max reading!

[lizzielizzie.livejournal.com]

Two things:
1) Make sure the bill is an actual read, and not the culmination of several incorrect estimates.
2) Go outside and figure out which meter is yours. Then go inside and flip all your circuit breakers off. Go back outside and see if the meter is spinning. If so, you are paying for electricity coming from somewhere outside your apartment. If not, flip your breakers back on one by one until everything is working again in your apt...maybe you have a circuit in your apartment that powers something somewhere else, and you're paying for it.

[beezy515.livejournal.com]

I received an electric bill like that once. I called up NStar and they said that there had been a mistake in the meter reading for that month. They fixed it in a matter of minutes. Good luck!

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

thanks! it would be awesome if that's all it takes. *crosses fingers*

[anyee.livejournal.com]

I run a hugely powerful computer, plus 3-4 fish tanks, and the usual stuff. Ours is in the 70-80 range, sometimes including AC. 400 sounds NUTS. Are you maybe paying for heat as well, somehow?

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

how do you mean? we have thermostats in my room, the living/dining area, and...one other and they are all set to "off"...so, just to heat the hot water in the shower/washer if anything (though i wash everything in cold myself).

No point in joining the chorus saying "that's nuts", but...

[unferth.livejournal.com]

The state has a public utilities commission (http://www.mass.gov/dpu) that might be able to help straighten out the problem if NStar is not cooperative.

They probably won't be able to help if some malfunctioning device really did use that much electricity, but they've helped out friends of mine in the past in disputes over bogus electric bills.

Re: No point in joining the chorus saying "that's nuts", but...

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

thank you! i'll definitely keep that link on hand if we can't straighten this out with either my roommate or nstar.

[nu-luba.livejournal.com]

i live in an 1100 square foot loft with 15 foot ceilings. We have a washer, dryer, dishwasher, central heat and ac electric, electric hot water heater.

Our bill is usually about $300 for all of that our high was $528 in February but that was because we were cranking the heat too high.

open space is harder to heat/cool I think for your space and the fact that heat is not part of the picture it sounds too high,

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

yeah, exactly. our living room and kitchen are both rather large (i.e., probably could make two living rooms and eat-in kitchen is a bit of an understatement) and they are all kind of one big huge room. but since we're not heating (or cooling) those currently, i'm kind of coming up empty on a reason for the bill really supposed to be being this high.

[eustaciavye.livejournal.com]

Assuming you don't have electric heat as well, that's crazy. I live in a large 2 bedroom. Right now our bills are very low because we are never home but even when I lived with someone who was constantly here with a million lights on, running the microwave for 30 minutes a day and plugging in power tools, the highest it ever got was $120. That was with a mid-summer heatwave necessitating 2 ACs running every night. Now a typical month without AC is $40, with AC is around $75.

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

even still, i can't imagine hot water (since we're obviously not heating anything right now) would cost us an extra $300 a month over everyone's highest bill.

my roommates (and myself) are all largely unemployed, but i'm nocturnal so i usually sleep during the day, and use 1 small lamp and my laptop at night, and i'll watch tv for an hour or two before i go to bed. my roommate is always good about turning lights off (he likes the stove light on at night), mostly because i think he likes it that way rather than saving electric, lol, but still.

[misterthorn.livejournal.com]

$400 is definitely ridiculous crazytalk. There's either a mistake in the reading, the billing procedure, or you are being charged for something you shouldn't be getting charged for.

Another thing you could do to track this down is read your own meter for a couple days and see what your kwh usage is. If it's commensurate with the cost you're paying, you know the issue is somewhere on "your" end (broken meter, electricity thief, etc). If your kwh usage is low, you know that something is wrong on nstar's end (bad meter reader, accounting error).

Low in this case would probably be in the 10-20 kwh/day range, 60 would be crazy nutso high.

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

thanks for the info! can't hurt to try.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

my mom lives in a 5000 sq ft house with central air always on and that's more than her bill (out in western mass, but I don't think the rates are much different).

I am in a 700 sqft place with 2 of us total and we run about $20-30. We have all CFLs, a power strip for our entertainment system that prevents drain, and we generally keep things turned off, but I seriously doubt I could get my bill over $50 by being completely reckless.

[eveninparadise.livejournal.com]

Am I reading you wrong, or have you never actually seen a bill and your roommate just tells you the cost? The only two times I've heard of electric bills that high, the person in charge had either decided (1) to profit from the bill or (2) to transfer the cost of utilities to the other roommates, paying no share for him/herself.

If that's the case, you're in for a really awkward conversation. Your roommate may not want to supply the bills, so you'd need to talk to the electric company directly. I hope you have an easier fix, though!

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

yeah, i posted this in my personal journal as well, because the only time i've seen a bill this high in the boston area was because i hadn't paid it in MANY months. (and that money to pay it off came from ME, not more from my roommates.)

he only posts the total and then what each of us owe, not the actual bills. i need copies of the bills though to finish my application/interview for SNAP, so i have a legit not-awkward way to ask him, and my only hope is he hands them over, and doesn't give me some excuse. to say he's a good guy that helped me out when i was down would be the understatement of the year, but i have always pulled my weight and paid my share. my fingers are crossed there's some kind of error or an issue with our meter.

also, thanks :)

[derekp.livejournal.com]

Dollars to Donuts the compressor in your refrigerator is going bad. Though it'd have to be going VERY bad to account for $400. That doesn't "seem high" that *is* outrageously high.

... Maybe one (or more) of the other apartments have outlets that actually run off your meter? And they're using their AC's off of those outlets?

I'd invest $35 in one of these and start checking your usage from various appliances:
http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4460-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B000RGF29Q

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

thanks.

and yeah. i talked to nstar, and since i am not 'authorized' all they can confirm is payments, so all i know is in march we paid 161, but in april 370. bills don't double in the spring for no reason! so something's wrong, i now just have to figure out how and why.

[bobobb.livejournal.com]

Also, you can get NSTAR to come through for free to do an energy audit. If nothing else pans out definitely do it to figure out if you are leaking energy somewhere. Also you get free light bulbs out of the deal :)

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

thanks i didn't know that!

now the hurdle is getting them to do anything since i am not 'authorized.' SIGH.