Saturday, January 21, 2012

I Just Got My Electricity Bill and Nearly Fainted!

I was kind of eager to get our first electricity bill, blissfully thinking that with a such a small place and with the fact that we are hardly ever home, I would have a small monthly bill to rave about.  Turns out I was wrong (see bill above).
That amount is more than double what we used to pay for electricity in our hold house which was like five times bigger than the small condo we are living in now.  Color me shocked (and appalled, and unhappy...). 
This is what I am doing about it:
  • I am going to contact our cousin who lived in the condo before us to see what her average bill was (she should be back next week).
  • I also posted this question on a local Las Vegas bulletin board to find out if this was indeed an average bill and the consensus was that for the small space and only having two people live there it was pretty high.
  • I went out to read the meter today and will read it every day for a month to keep track of our own usage and see if it measures up with what the electricity company says we use.
  • I will call the electric company and ask them about this and see if they have any idea why it was so high (I'm kind of dreading this because it is a minimum 30-40 minute wait on hold just to talk to someone).
  • I am now washing our clothes in cold water.  Right after we moved in I did a ton (literally) of laundry, all in warm water.  Plus with the use of the dryer I am thinking that racked up a lot of electricity usage.  I'm even pondering hanging our clothes outside to dry (a practice frowned on by the condo board I think.  Maybe I can hang clothes at night so they won't see it).
  • I checked this website and found that electricity rates are much higher in Nevada than what we paid in Washington.  Bummer.
  • We already switched to a low-flow shower head (that last thing I want to part with is my hot showers in the morning).
  • We have been using a small space heater in whatever room we are in so we didn't use the furnace to heat the entire place but now I am wondering if these draw more electricity than a heat pump system.  Don't know where I would find out if this is true or not...
  • I went around and unplugged everything we aren't using (computer printer, DVD player, etc).  Not sure how much this will help.
  • I guess I need to wrap my head around the fact that an all electric house is just going to cost more.  In our last house we used natural gas for heating and hot water so I think this made our electricity bill there significantly lower.
  • I am kind of dreading summer time when we will need to run the AC 24/7. Yikes!
Does anyone have any other thought on this?

10 comments:

  1. Electric costs a LOT more than gas... :( Hope you're able to get your costs down a bit!!

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  2. When my husband and I were in our first house YEARS ago, we were determined to cut our utility bills. Since we lived in a place with mild winters, we decided not to light the pilot light for the central heater and use just electric space heaters. When our HIGH bill came in, I called and asked how it could possibly be so high. The gal said, "It's snowing!" I replied, "We haven't even lit the pilot light!" At that, they sent someone out and found a defective meter, registering TWICE what we were actually using (we got a refund!). So you might want to have the meter checked.

    Jenny

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  3. Dh and I used to live in a 2bdrm Apartment, approx 1117 sq ft. laundry in-suite and with a dish washer. I washed everything on cold, hung most things, and we had energy-saving light bulbs everywhere. Unfortunately, we had HUGE windows, and electric heat, which caused our cozy little apartment to cost us upward of $300 some months during the winter. Make sure your doors and windows are well insulated, and your window-coverings are thick enough to prevent heat-transfer!

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  4. Do you have a programmable thermostat? We put one in, and it saved us a ton of money. A decent one only cost about 25 bucks at home depot.

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  5. My bill was a tad more than double what yours was. I was floored as well. It's my highest bill in about 5 years. I have been running the heater allot more because I'm working from home now rather than in an office all day everyday.

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  6. We pay $141 a month on a 2200 sq foot house, so $112 for a 1BR condo seems pretty high. We have an electric water heater and dryer also and lots of other gadgets that suck wattage while they're off. I remember a lady on Oprah that saved hundreds per month by unplugging everything that wasn't being used.

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  7. Check your codes. Our electrictry doubles from 8-3 and triples from 3-7! I wash at night. I used to dry clothes in the kitchen after. A double spin in the washer. In Vegas they will be dry by am.
    We pay $51 to just get electricity to our house! We use a radiant heater at night and loads of blankets. Few lights are on during the day.

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  8. We have natural gas so its much cheaper. I know my best friends place is all electric and it is driving him crazy

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  9. Thanks all for the great comments! I guess Im not the only one with electricity issues!

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  10. Yep, depending on where you live, electricity is higher, not only do we in texas use alot of electricity in the summer (air), its more expensive. in a 2200 square foot house my averaged for th eyear electric is two hundred dollars (working on it, working on it) and our gas is so neglible I dont even get it averaged...Cold water my friend, cold water

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