Author Topic: Residential electric use inquiry  (Read 1566 times)

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Offline gabeh1018

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Residential electric use inquiry
« on: November 11, 2022, 08:47:18 PM »
Hello All!

I know this might not be your typical post, but here it goes.
On a typical day my wife and I might average about $3.50 to $4.50 in terms of electrical use.
Even while my mom and sister spent two weeks with us in October, we only peaked at around $5.60ish
Once they left, we used $3.83 Thursday, November 3 and $3.01 on Friday, November 4.
Since Saturday, November 5, it has spiked to approximately $6.50 - $6.70  a day and nothing has changed on our end.
For example, we were averaging about 0.12 an hour November 3, but this past Wednesday it jumped to 0.28 an hour.
We live in central Michigan.
The house was built in 2004.
We have a gas hot water heater.
the furnace has had minimal usage and the HVAC system is turned off.
We have a 2019 SubZero fridge on the main floor an an 18 year old refrigerator in the basement.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
What might be causing this spike in energy usage?

Thanks,

Gabe

Offline ReaperKK

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Re: Residential electric use inquiry
« Reply #1 on: November 12, 2022, 08:44:08 AM »
Hard to tell, do you have a smart meter. We got one with our house (built in 2016) and it tells us how much power is drawn by the appliances. Additionally maybe peak pricing changed? Just a few shots in the dark here.

Offline El Barto

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Re: Residential electric use inquiry
« Reply #2 on: November 12, 2022, 11:17:37 AM »
In Texas the smart meter website will show consumption in 15 minute increments. Michigan probably has something similar. Since I've been wasting electricity for profit over the last 4 months I've made extensive use of it and it's quite informative. I can typically pinpoint specific appliance usage through the thing.

A jump of .16 is significant. That's an appliance in use. Looking at my graph that's a light and my electric kettle every morning when I get up. It'd help to know how you're tracking this. Is the .16 based on a daily average? And are you using the furnace at all?

Since you gave specific Kw numbers that kind of rules out price hike.
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Offline gabeh1018

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Re: Residential electric use inquiry
« Reply #3 on: November 12, 2022, 08:44:27 PM »
Consumers only hits us with a peak rate during June1 - September 30 between the hours of 2 - 7 PM.
I don't believe I have a smart meter.
Consumers only provides us with hourly usage.
I forget which night, but at around 1 Am there was a spike of $0.50

I haven't been able to perform an entire breaker test yet.
With that being said, even after I hit the breakers for the two refrigerators earlier today while they were both running, the meter only  went from 1.450 KWH down to 1.2 KWH

It's important to point out that nothing else was turned on or running in our house aside from the cable mode and misc google, alexa devices when the meter read 1.2 KWH.
No furnace was running.