I'm sure this is on a lot of people's minds lately, but I have a kinda unique question.
We had electric baseboard heat for the past 5 years, and our electric bill hovered around $180 per month, on average. In the summer, we used window AC's in almost every room. In June 2016, we decided we'd had enough, and had a heat pump / central AC installed, at great cost (about $12,000). We were told by everyone that we'd save money on our electric bill, due to it being more efficient than baseboard heat or window AC's, on the other of 1/4 to 1/2 of our electric bill. We were intending to use that savings to pay off the heat pump.
Problem is, in the past 18 months, our electric bill has increased to about $210 per month, on average. We kept waiting, month after month, to see savings, but it hasn't happened. We asked the company that installed it, and now they say that "of course the electric isn't going to decrease, you've never had a large appliance like this running". The part that kills me is that the heat pump is a single-zone unit, with the thermostat in the kitchen, so it isn't even keeping the bedrooms warm. We have to use floor-standing heaters to maintain a decent temperature in the bedrooms anyway... although we suffered for the first winter, just bundling up with blankets, hoping that'd help the budget.
We live in Pennsylvania, so winters are cold, and we also have the option to switch our electric supplier. I've gone with the cheapest option available, so our generation cost is about $0.0559 per kWh, but we're using 2200 kWh per month.
As far as the rest of the house, all of our appliances are new, nothing older than 7 years. The oven is only a few months old, but is electric. The water heater (50 gallon) is also electric, but was new in 2011. I have a lot of electronics, like game consoles and such, but they're usually turned off or in standby mode. The only things I can think of that run 24/7 are the fridge (Samsung, new in 2010), a computer (850w max, but runs at ~5-15%), the wifi router, cable modem, and a laptop. All our ceiling lights and lamps are LED bulbs too.
We keep getting things in the mail from the electric company saying that we're using ~50% more electricity than our neighbors, and ~70-80% more than "energy efficient" neighbors.
What am I missing?
January 06, 2018 at 11:02PM
