Energy bill shot up by almost $200 help

13 comments

1. Electric heat?

2. You are using 6000 kwh per year that’s a family house man.

   How is your energy pricing ? Do you use a normal plan?

   Annual electricity consumption of a 5-person household Germany 2023. In 2023, German five-person households in detached houses with electric water heating consumed around 6,300 kilowatt hours of electricity a year, on average. Apartment buildings with the same system consumed 4,500 kilowatt hours.14 Jun 2024
   Source Statista

   Advice: Contact your electricity provider and ask if you can arrange installment payments if you’re having trouble managing the costs.

   Also, check your heating system—it’s likely electric. Consider switching your plan from fixed to floating. Use appliances like washing machines or heating systems during the day when energy prices are lower.

3. Look at the chart that correlates temperature to energy usage. I would say you have electric heat which would be the largest energy user for you, not your water heater, dish washer or washing machine. Look at what your thermostat is set to and maybe drop it down a few or more degrees.

4. Looks like your usage spikes on the coldest days. Consider lowering the temperature of your heater and dressing warmer while inside. Also check your windows for drafts and install window insulation film as necessary, it makes a surprisingly big difference.

5. It’s likely your heat. Mine is the same. You probably don’t know why yet because you’ve been living there for only 4 months. I have a heat pump and an emergency heat element. When it gets well below freezing the heat pump is way less efficient until the emergency heat kicks on. Heat pumps use ambient heat as energy and there is less of that in the winter. The emergency heat is the least efficient use of electricity, heating up a metal coil until it turns red, like a toaster oven.

6. Something doesn’t seem right here. Your daily usage averages 60kW which seems waaaaaay too much for 1 person in what I’m assuming is an apartment and with temperatures still in the 40s-50s. Your hot water heater might be broken and just constantly heating the water.

7. If you take a lot of showers and run a lot of water and have the heating on a lot, this will unfortunately happen.

8. Take a picture of the central heating. That’s what it is.

9. If you live in a climate that gets winter, your energy bills go up in the winter time to heat your place.

   For us, our natural gas goes up in the winter and goes down in the summer (furnace is gas). Our electric goes down in the winter, but up in the summer (air conditioning). Utilities can vary from month to month.

10. Turn the set point of your heat and water heater down as low as you can tolerate them. Take fewer showers. Take shorter showers or turn the water off while lathering up. Seal up any cracks and drafty doors and windows. Wrap the water heater with an insulating fiberglass blanket.

    Your cost of electricity looks to be $.193/kWh which while above average isn’t totally out of line and cheaper than some other places. Resistive electric heat and electric water heaters are the absolute worst, especially if you live in a cold climate with higher than average electric rates.

11. The temperate difference between indoors and outdoors drives the entirety of your bill. If it’s 30 degrees, you need ten times as much energy as if it’s 3 degrees.

12. Check to see if your utility company has budget billing.

13. When the demand growth is people’s apartments pulling as much energy as a house and not data centers

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