Sudden huge surge in electric bill

[darkewaffle]

So my parent's house suddenly quadrupled in KWH consumption over the last month somehow. The normally ~$170 bill is now $680 this month.

On one hand I'm wondering if maybe they didn't just fuck up their July and August readings and it didn't show until this month because September was just an estimate rather than an actual reading, and you can see the 12 month usage as of last year is pretty close to this year's. However, according to the power company our meter is showing the "Avg Daily Usg" to be correct at 261 KWH.

And, on the other hand, I really don't want to wait until next month to find out if they're getting another $700 bill.

It's a 3 story house, probably something on the order of 2-2.5k square feet. We don't have any particularly huge power draws that I know of. The electric hot water heater goes off this time of year and they switch to a gas powered one. Two computers, three tvs, washer, dryer, dishwasher, pool out back; really nothing out of the ordinary that I can think of.

They called the power company who were not particularly helpful, they just came and double checked the reading and then were on their way.

When we get a chance soon I think we'll be turning off power to the whole house and powering the breakers on one by one to see which, if any, are causing the massive draw to narrow it down. Does anyone have any ideas as to what could cause such a huge jump or what we should be looking for?

 

[qliveur]

Your folks are growing pot.

 

[Numenorean]

If you assume that Jul/Aug usage was say 3 rows high, then yeah that would fit that they fucked those up and are tacking them onto the bill.

 

[zinfamous]

first question:

have you inspected your basement? It's entirely possible that some rapscallion has moved in and opened up a cannabis grow house under your house.

 

[zinfamous]

Your folks are growing pot.

scooped b/c I wanted to be more clever.

 

[kranky]

I think your first thought is right. Jul/Aug were underbilled, Sept was an estimate, and this bill got everything caught up. Look at their bills for Jul/Aug from last year, that probably will answer it.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Also have them switch to averaged billing.

 

[Pardus]

Your usage has tripled, so the bill is correct.

 

[muskie32]

I think your first thought is right. Jul/Aug were underbilled, Sept was an estimate, and this bill got everything caught up. Look at their bills for Jul/Aug from last year, that probably will answer it.

+1

 

[nutxo]

This happened to us once. It was a burnt element in the water heater.

 

[Modelworks]

Most meters report the readings with either radio or over the power lines. Sometimes if the weather is bad they will not get the report in time and it will get added to a later bill.

Turn the main breaker off, the big one at the top. The meter should stop. Turn it back on and do one breaker at a time. Meters do go bad but it is very rare and they usually slow down rather than speed up when failing. Anything that generates heat from electricity will consume the most.

If after all that you don't find the answer call the utility again and demand a meter change and the old meter to be audited. They will remove it and have it tested to confirm if it was working correctly.

 

[olds]

Had this happen to a neighbor.
His water heater was leaking into the crawl space under the house. The water just soaked into the ground and never showed up around the foundation so no one noticed it till they started looking to see why the bill was so high. Heater was on constantly for about a month.
Power company basically said, so what? You used the electricity.

 

[nickbits]

New smart meter by chance?

 

[dennilfloss]

Your folks are growing pot.

Grow op was the first thing that came to mind.

 

[Eli]

Holy fuck.

That is a massive electric bill, and I'm not talking about the last month.

The only time I've ever seen my electric bill over 2,000kWh in a month is when there were 5 people living in the house and I was running two 1,000W...space heaters.



We had our electric bill down to just over 300kWh this summer...

 

[Anonemous]

(another) Could be a leaky water heater. A friend had a leaky water heater a few months ago, when their electric bill jumped 4x normal. Turns out it was a leaky water heater. Had to replace the entire piping as well as tear down the walls behind the washer. Luckily they lived in an apartment complex and it was the management's responsibility and they covered the repairs and the electric bill. What was crazy was that some of the pipes ran underneath the apartment and you could actually feel the ground heat up from the leaky pipes kinda like heated floors...

 

[Ichinisan]

You should see how mine climbed and climbed through the summer. I went through the whole summer without a proper functioning air conditioner in my apartment because Maintenance just COULD NOT fix the damn thing.

 

[caspur]

Eli, most likely it is a heated pool + pumps. Very power hungry.

Otherwise, I'd say metal halide grow lamps.

If they aren't growing pot, I've also seen people with that kind of utility usage with multi-thousand gallon salt water fish tanks.

The OP is somewhat deceptive because he post normal household appliances like computers/TVs/water heater, etc. Any killawat/B&D power meter can confirm those don't draw anywhere near that type of electricity.

If you want to do math, just convert the electricity usage into BTUs....which is not direct, but gives an estimate of heat being dissipated. 8000 kw a month is a lot of heat.

 

[Phoenix86]

New smart meter by chance?

This was my first thought (after grow op). There were many stories like this in the dfw area when they first rolled them out including one meter going off the chart where the only thing hook up was a single street lamp at a parking lot. There were no external outlets, just one large lamp hardwired. Haven't heard any new stories since so I assumed they worked the problems out.

 

[superccs]

Send them $80 and write MY RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH! on the bill.

 

[iGas]

It could be low refrigerant that induced icing and increased energy consumption if your parents have a heatpump/AC. Or, swimming pool/badly leaking hot water tank as suggested above.

 

[JEDI]

someone is tapping your parents electric line

 

[Cattlegod]

damn dude, my electric bill was 38 bucks last month.

 

[cKGunslinger]

July and August seem ridiculously low. Whose September power bill is 10x the August one?

Probably a fuck-up on their end, that your parents will have to pay for.


Mine:

 

[Eli]

Eli, most likely it is a heated pool + pumps. Very power hungry.

Otherwise, I'd say metal halide grow lamps.

If they aren't growing pot, I've also seen people with that kind of utility usage with multi-thousand gallon salt water fish tanks.

The OP is somewhat deceptive because he post normal household appliances like computers/TVs/water heater, etc. Any killawat/B&D power meter can confirm those don't draw anywhere near that type of electricity.

If you want to do math, just convert the electricity usage into BTUs....which is not direct, but gives an estimate of heat being dissipated. 8000 kw a month is a lot of heat.

Oh, I'm aware. I was just saying. I couldn't imagine my bill being that high, unless like mentioned I was running 1000W MH..er, space heaters.

The water heater can use a lot of electricity. I think the elements are usually 5500W each.