Help me identify why my Electric bill is nucking futs

So my house is a ranch with a basement. 1,720 SF each floor. In the last twelve months I added R60 attic insulation and air sealed all the holes in my upstairs ceiling. HVAC is all in the basement. I was hoping for lower electric bills. 

But.. I also had a radon mitigation system installed so a small fan runs 24/7/365. I replaced a gas range with an electric induction range. 

I though my electric bill had gone up a LOT but I pulled three years of bills and compared (below) to see that it's not much more than prior peak months. All the added stuff will increase my consumption. And this year has been fookin hot. 

My question is.. is there a device I can buy that will monitor the breakers and identify which ones are using all the juice?
 

Brother, you're in Atlanta. I know what the south does in the summer. My AC bill looks the saaaaaame way. Power costs have gone up exponentially in the past year or so as well. Inflation is a bitch. Get skinny and sweat more are my best pieces of advice. 

Honestly- I would look at what you kwh draws are overall, and see if there's a breakdown of times that they peak. I'm sure you can narrow it down to time of day and subsequently who and or what is running at that time that may not be running as frequently other times of day. As an example, my AC actually runs less during the day because I keep it much warmer during the day in my home because I can be awake much warmer than I can sleep. 

If I'm not mistaken, you would need a CT around each wire you want to check the load on. Unless there is some new fangled breaker panel that has this incorporated into the design.

Look at the billing info from your provider and see if they have changed anything. When I used to live in SC my provider switched to a billing system where your highest 1 hour usage during peak times was billed at a sky high rate that usually resulted in that one hour's cost being about 40% of my bill for the 30 day billing period. The peak hour period was 6-10 am in the cooler months and 5-9 pm in the warmer months. I was very conscious of this and adjusted when I ran the dishwasher, did laundry, etc so it wasn't during peak hours. I also used a programmable thermostat with 4 separate periods per day and tweaked the temps a bit during the peak hours. For the first year of this billing system, my average bill was $100 less than my neighbor with the same square footage and construction. Once we talked about the revised billing system he made some adjustments and brought his bill down a bit.

I've read that people often put a radon fan that's larger  than necessary in their mitigation system. I'm thinking of buying a solar cell or two to alleviate the draw when I finally get off my ass and install everything on my own.

If your company is like mine, they completely screwed us on rates last year, taking kWh from 8 cents to 12.  It does look like your watt consumption is up as well.

Ask your electric company how frequently they check the meter.  Mine only checks every few months.  They charge me an estimate based on last year and average temps this year.  When they show up to actually read the meter, it might be way more or way less than they estimated.

This happened to me when I added central air.  They must have read the meter shortly before I installed it, then charged me what the last few years suggested.  When they showed up to actually read the meter a few months later, I suddenly had a $450 bill when I had been paying $110 or so per month.

Some great feedback so far. Thanks everyone. I also have ecobee thermostats up and down - both operate the same system with zone dampers. I did notice the system running all the time last year (outside of set points!) when I realized it was in a predictive mode where it would work to get ahead of the programmed settings. I killed that and it helped.

Menopausal wife has probably been the biggest energy consumer.. we run that AC down LOW 🥶 at night. In Hotlanta. 
 

edit: I also have and will continue to look at the ecobee stats and analytics and compare to GA Power rates vs times of day. I'll bet they have something like that working against me. 

OHSCrifle said:

My question is.. is there a device I can buy that will monitor the breakers and identify which ones are using all the juice?
 

There is and it works well. 
 

Emporia Vue

Looking quickly through your bills, the high months are the summer months when you are probably running the AC. At first glance, I think your bills are reasonable. 

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

If your company is like mine, they completely screwed us on rates last year, taking kWh from 8 cents to 12.  It does look like your watt consumption is up as well.

Ask your electric company how frequently they check the meter.  Mine only checks every few months.  They charge me an estimate based on last year and average temps this year.  When they show up to actually read the meter, it might be way more or way less than they estimated.

This happened to me when I added central air.  They must have read the meter shortly before I installed it, then charged me what the last few years suggested.  When they showed up to actually read the meter a few months later, I suddenly had a $450 bill when I had been paying $110 or so per month.

I seem to recall they forget to pay YOU when they estimate the other way!

I believe they have to give you a credit back (not positive) but not if you don't catch it!!

My first thought was unannounced rate hike, but also seeing increased summer consumption from last year. 

Does your power company offer a budget or average billing plan? 

We recently went on it, they average every quarter of usage and split the bill up that way. Helps take some of the sting off the higher usage months.

Our company also uses smart meters, which I was originally against, but I've seen the light. This gives exact measurements every month, but also allows me to see consumption by hour through their website. This does make tracking down random high bills a little easier. Isn't smart enough to guess appliances or the draw itself, but if you see a spike in the middle of the night, or just all day consumption that seems ridiculous, it helps a little too figure things out. 

My wife tracks our KWh, daily, in an attempt to keep the necessary bills as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA in a related Industry!)

She has a '91 double wide. We did put $50K into it a few years back so better windows(and doors and siding) - the wall insulation went from prolly R3.5 to R4! Roof is 2x2 construction, so next to no insulation. Is at least metal, now  

Under crawl space has a grand total of 1" insulation, and plastic... torn in many places.

And we average 850, during some of the time periods you are reaching 2000s.  We don't freeze in the winter, or sweat indoors in the summer.  
I think I might see the problem 

BTW, sorry your wife is having those problems. Worth every dime of AC to keep her comfortable 

In reply to RevRico :

My wife (The Financial Manager) plays it like a game! While I was out working this spring, ( 1/10 the laundry, less cooking, milder temps) she was SO excited she could keep her daily average to $5 /day! We're about $11 (average per day) this summer. 

In reply to 03Panther :

My company is usually really good at estimating. I might notice a little difference but they have never overestimated by much. I might have a surprise $80 bill instead of $110, but they have never been so far off that they owed me

BlindPirate said:

Looking quickly through your bills, the high months are the summer months when you are probably running the AC. At first glance, I think your bills are reasonable. 

This is correct. Looks like the 24/7 fan and the electric range have cancelled the insulation savings. 

Steve_Jones said:

OHSCrifle said:

My question is.. is there a device I can buy that will monitor the breakers and identify which ones are using all the juice?
 

There is and it works well. 

Emporia Vue

Gracias

OHSCrifle said:

But.. I also had a radon mitigation system installed so a small fan runs 24/7/365. I replaced a gas range with an electric induction range. 

While your electric usage has gone up, hopefully your gas bill has gone down a bit?

In reply to 03Panther :

They may not pay you, but I've had a month or two go by where my bill is zero or almost nothing because they had estimated ahead of actual usage.

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

If your company is like mine, they completely screwed us on rates last year, taking kWh from 8 cents to 12.  It does look like your watt consumption is up as well.

 

OMG Completezeley SzxCrewEred!

Wisconsin is $0.17/kWh

$0.12/kWH is actually so low its comical.

In reply to 93gsxturbo :

Maryland is 0.12 for electric  plus 0.12 for "delivery" of said electricity... plus taxes and fees. Just the taxes on mine are more than his bill. It's crazy, If I do the average billing thing, it's $680  

Last month we averaged 18.3 cents per KWH. That's all the distribution and fees included. Our AC is set to 78 during the day and drops for awhile in the evening before bed. Taking a quick look at your billing info , it looks like your rates may be on a sliding scale, or there could be time of use charges in there. We don't turn on the dishwasher until after 7:00PM, for example, and our AC unit is on interruptable power, so the utility controls when it turns on. I'm in Michigan, so not as hot as Atlanta generally, a two story 2700 sq.ft. home, with a full basement, and we used 453 KWH last month. My worst month in the last 13 was 960 KWH. What I notice is that you use more electricity in your cooler months than I use in my warmest months....why? Where is it all going? Is Atlanta that hot even in the winter months?.......and just curious, what size is the radon fan? Even a 200 watt unit is a dollar a day at your rates.

Bill looks normal to me.  Lots of A/C this summer.

In reply to Steve_Jones :

I have a "sense" monitor. It's not perfect but has done a pretty good job identifying most common items and I could go around turning stuff on and off if I really wanted to get granular. 
 

Holy. berkeley.  That bill is alarming.  Like a serious emergency.

My house is ~1450 sq. ft. ranch with an equally sized basement and I dont think I've had a bill over 1/3 of yours.  All electric appliances.  All you guys who think that looks "normal" should get your head checked.

In reply to prodarwin :

Normal? To some of us that's cheap. The last time I had a bill that low was late 90s.....

That does not make his pain any less, especially after the insulation upgrade though.