Sue
Ours was horrifyingly high when it arrived last month: $450 for 2 months! This is a 1700 sq/ft house with electric heat and hot water and 2 people. We use energy efficient bulbs. We keep the heat turned down (setpoint is 63), and even though my husband works from home, he turns it off when I leave for work and it stays off all day. We have a furnace that heats the entire first floor, but ceramic heaters for the downstairs (offices) when needed. And we do have a large freezer in the basement.
I called City Light about it and they were very nice and helpful. They had me go out to make sure the meter was being read correctly (sadly, it was). Then, even though I’d only been here for 10 months, they went over the last 5 years of history of the house for the average bills – obviously we don’t know how many people were here then (various tenants) or how much they turned the heat off, etc., but it was helpful. Yes, he said we’re on the high end, but tenants 5 years ago had similar kwh usage, so it’s not unheard of.
I have a feeling that in our particular situation that the issue is that squirrels have recently ripped some insulation out of the front of the house under our bay window (which would explain why the livingroom and bedroom are 7 degrees in difference at the same setpoint). Despite the fact that squirrels are probably living god-knows-where in our house, that insulation is most certainly making a huge difference in our bills. We have a call in to our landlord about it, but we’ll see what happens. I wasn’t shocked by the previous $300 electric bill because I’d had surgery and was home with heat on 24/7 and fairly high at that. So when I went back to work and we cut back even more, and to see it go up another $150, it was alarming. And there’s seriously not much more I can cut back at this point.