Electricity usage - too high? (Houston: 2015, apartments, condo)

[rjj42]

I am a customer of Green Mountain Energy and recently I logged into my account to see what my electricity usage has been like. I live in a one bedroom condo and would like to know if I'm paying too much money for electricity.(I feel like I am, so it would be very helpful to get input from this forum based on your experiences)

My usage over the last couple of months have been as follows:

Jan 2015 - 1096.99 Kwh
Feb 2015 - 785.51 Kwh
March 2015 - 574.44 Kwh
April 2015 - 305.43 Kwh

In the winter months, I do feel drafts of cold air seeping through my bedroom glass window and the glass sliding door leading from my living room to the patio. My one bedroom condo is not that big, roughly about 800 sq ft. so its not that big at all, just to give everyone perspective.
Thanks!

[ocngypz]

I'm assuming you are total electric......heat, hot water, cooking, laundry?

Must have been really cold in Houston in Jan!

I had an all electric unit in New England.........and never used that many KWh in a middle of a winter month. Small house.. about the same size and poorly insultated.

[aero100]

It would help if you posted what you set your thermostat at for heat and AC and whether you do things like turn it down at night or if you leave. Electric heat can be very inefficient, especially in Houston where most structures usually don't invest in high efficiency heating.

[NTT]

Yes, I think that is high. My home is a little over 2000 sq/ft.. Dryer & stove are electric. I set my thermostat to 68F degree in the winter (heater is gas) and yet, my usage has been less than 500 Khw for all winter months. When I leave my home for several hours, I turn the thermostat to 62F-64F degree, I dont' turn it off. Do you turn your heater/AC off when you leave the house?

[rjj42]

Originally Posted by NTT

Yes, I think that is high. My home is a little over 2000 sq/ft.. Dryer & stove are electric. I set my thermostat to 68F degree in the winter (heater is gas) and yet, my usage has been less than 500 Khw for all winter months. When I leave my home for several hours, I turn the thermostat to 62F-64F degree, I dont' turn it off. Do you turn your heater/AC off when you leave the house?

Yes I do turn my heater/AC off when I leave the apartment in the morning.
Right now, I have my thermostat set at 74F.
In the winter, I used to have it set at around the same.
I have everything electric, including heat, dryers, stoves, etc. My dryer is really old though and I often have to run it for an hour to get my clothes dry. Could that be a major thing?

[aero100]

Originally Posted by rjj42

Yes I do turn my heater/AC off when I leave the apartment in the morning.
Right now, I have my thermostat set at 74F.
In the winter, I used to have it set at around the same.
I have everything electric, including heat, dryers, stoves, etc. My dryer is really old though and I often have to run it for an hour to get my clothes dry. Could that be a major thing?

It's not your dryer. Electric dryers haven't noticeably improved in efficiency through the years, its probably using around 4 kW of power when it's running.

You probably have a heat pump. Below about 40F, they need to use supplemental resistive electrical heat, which really starts chewing up the power. Also, if you have a heat pump it may not be helping to turn down the heat when you are gone (because the very inefficient supplemental kicks in to bring the heat back up quickly when you turn it back up). 74 is also pretty toasty for heat in the winter, which is also using power.

If you have a smart meter, I would recommend you go to the smartmetertexas website and register. You can then pull up your usage at very specific intervals (as little as 15 minutes) in January and see what your usage was on specific days so you can map it against the outside temperature. If you are really pulling a lot of power on nights where it is below 40, that's what is using the electricity.

[sonic0boom]

Something doesn't seem right. I have a 3100 sq ft house with single pane windows and a 2 year old 15 SEER AC, but my March usage was 598 Kwh. Only 20 Kwh more than your 800 sq ft condo?

I once had a billing issue and called the provider. They had me go outside to check the reading on the meter. What we found was that the current reading was *less* than the reading on the bill (and this was a week after they sent out the bill). They must have read the wrong meter or something. But i'm not sure what you can do about a 4-5 month old bill.

[rjj42]

Originally Posted by sonic0boom

Something doesn't seem right. I have a 3100 sq ft house with single pane windows and a 2 year old 15 SEER AC, but my March usage was 598 Kwh. Only 20 Kwh more than your 800 sq ft condo?

I once had a billing issue and called the provider. They had me go outside to check the reading on the meter. What we found was that the current reading was *less* than the reading on the bill (and this was a week after they sent out the bill). They must have read the wrong meter or something. But i'm not sure what you can do about a 4-5 month old bill.

Oh wow, ok that's a possibility I guess. I hadn't thought about that. I will try that route.
I just assumed it was becuase of the old dryer and maybe an old AC outside that my bill was this high.
I've lived in 1 bdrm apartments before and my bill has never been this high ever, I'm sure something is going on, just don't know what.

[sonic0boom]

Yeah, i would start with calling them up to see what you can do. I can't image an old dryer using that much juice but you might want to have your dryer ducts cleaned out.

[HTownNearNative]

It sounds like they made a huge error reading your meter.