1st bill was estimated based on no or minimal consumption prior, second one was actual and your usage caught up?

I hope not. If a couple baseboard heaters set to low give me a $600 bill, I guess it's gonna be cold there from now on.

Could I have improperly installed the unit resulting in outrageous electric usage?

I don't think so. The probably never shut off. The largest contributing factor here is an empty house. An empty house is a lot more expensive to heat than a furnished one. You heat the air only. When furnished everything get to the thermostat setting. As the heat leaves the structure the furniture will help to maintain the temp as it puts off some heat until it all drops to a point where the thermostat needs to call again. In other words furniture slow down the rate of temperature drop.
Of course with that said how well is this place insulated and what shape is the doors and windows?

dogboy

what area of country is this log home located? how well is it insulated? no central heat available? what is electric rate?

you do need to verify if you have a problem and exactly what appliance or HVAC is burning those watts. electric strip baseboard heat is one of the most expensive.

I certainly would contact the utility. Is there an actual mthly meter reading or is it just estimated and occasionally read?

IMO

The home is in NE Ohio. It is heated with wood. Supplemental heat is provided by electric baseboard heat. They are in every room. We have owned it since December. It is a log home. While not really insulated at all, it's nicely done and well chinked. There is no HVAC system in it. There are two forced air wood burners. I don't have the bill in front of me. I'll post that info later after I run the kids around.

Often the thermostat for electric baseboard heaters is single pole, shuts off just one wire. If the heater is supplied at 240 volts, that leaves the element supplied at 120 volts, but not heating due to the other conductor being disconnected by the thermostat. But if the element has a ground fault at some point, the 120 volts will heat continuously at low output. I have encountered this twice, never with a new heater. Shut off everything except that heater. Look at the electric meter disc. The turn off that heater and look at the meter again. It is possible that the problem is elsewhere. A similar ground fault in an element in a water heater can do the same thing.

when my wife and i bough tour house the first bill was like 100.00. the second was closer to 350! the reason, the first bill was for only a few days service. you need to look at ALL info on the bills, as they may cover different ranges of dates, as well as you could have had fuel adjustments and etc.

as stated an empty house has less tuff holding heat and therefore cools quicker. i would kill everythign in teh house and see if the meter is still turning to verify nothign else is on or at fault. also, if you are using worklights they draw a lot of juice. mine use 2kwh per hour they are on, at my rates that is a whopping .20 an hour, but it adds up.

electric heat is expensive, efficient but expensive.

"electric heat is expensive, efficient but expensive."

I disagree.electric resistant baseboard heat is not efficient compared to even a middle of the road HP system.

IMO

I pay 5.6 cents per kilowatt hour. The bill claims I used 7000 kilowat hours.

ThatÂs an awful lot of electricity (that has to be for 2-months)!

Irrespective of all this, your electrical rate is very reasonable. I would strongly suggest installing some sort of heat pump whether itÂs a split mini system, forced air, geothermal (forced air or hydronic) Â but something electric & efficient.

I would also take my own meter readings and do my own calculations just to monitor consumption and verify billing.

IMO

SR

If you really want to know what is drawing all the power, Black and Decker markets a power monitor. I just purchased one myself online it cost $150. It attaches to the outside of you meter =. IT looks like it measures the speed of the wheel ,but will work on some wihtout wheels.and You key in the price per KWH. Then it will tell you how much power you use at any given time. IT has a feature to let you check a particular appliance. From the instuction I think you simply shut off the appliance, push a button then turn it back on and it will basically tell you how much power that applance uses. I have not hooked mine up yet. An elcetric hot water heater with a bad lower eliment will run the bill through the roof as well, even if you do not use the water.

Black and Decker also make a thermal reader to help locate cold spots needing insulation. It is $50 and just came out. I bought both.

Good luck

nah, electric is efficient. as close to 100% as you can get. power used pretty much equals power output. HP is much cheaper cause it moves heat from one source to another, but a furnace(electric or gas/oil)creates heat from the fuel source. no sense arguing the symantics of it.

7000kwh is a lot. i have 2 HVAC systems on my house. it is 30 years old with leaky single pane aluminum frame windows. add to that a 29 yr old woman, a 4year old girl, neither of which understand that light switches cut things OFF as well, and having to change the temps so that the 3 month old girl is comfortable, and we still rarely use over 3500kwh in a single month. i would say you definitely have a problem or a misread meter or something. are you sure there was not a deposit fee on there?

You have a problem that you need to find. Either it's a mistake on the power company's behalf or you have an unknown source of power consumption. May be a good idea to have someone trained in energy analysis or whatnot to take a look? I'm using about 5000 kwh/month for a full single-family home with lights, tv, computers, heat pump, appliances, everything you can think of running, so I can't even IMAGINE an unoccupied home using 7000 kwh--I don't care how many electric baseboards you're operating at minimum temperature.

I would check that heater that it is not running 24/7 and that it is operating correctly. I would also check and make sure nothing else is malfunctioning. If you call the electric company they should be able to tell you the last two dates that the meter was actually read. If it has been a couple months or more since actual readings have been taken that could account for a huge difference. There is a device called TED the energy detective that looks promising for giving accurate readings on usage on whole house or on individual circuits. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out the root cause of this. If that is one month of true usage you need to do something different ASAP!

Lastly, is it possible neighbours are hooked up/stealing electricity? Is there a shed or garage that may have heating turned on, or a hot tub you thought was off, that's on?

Is the water heater on? Not that you could easily use that sort of level of power. If all other suggestions fail you could contact the poco and ask them for ideas. I suppose it's also possible they made a mistake, made an 'estimate' or the meter reader skipped work and made up the numbers, or transposed something, or missed a decimal point.

I guess the other litmus test is what the next bill is.

I have a 50 year old 2000 sqft house with original windows, avg at best insulation, a hot tub, last year I had a 7.3 SEER 23 year old A/C and it takes me May, June, July, and September to use 7000 kWh with the A/C on 69-70 degrees. I live alone.

I called the utility company. They claim that the usage was from 12-22 until 2-26. Shockingly, they tell me that past usage during the winter months of 2007 was 13000 kilowatt hours per month! I used 700-800 on average at my personal residence.

I don't know how one could steal electrical there. The houses are acres apart.

There has to be a problem there, or I am putting in an electric heat pump forced air unit while the basement is open.

That is an average of ~4000 watts on all the time.

Borrow a clamp on ammeter and start measuring.

The heat pump idea is a good one anyway but you will want to make sure it has some form of humidification as well, since it's a log structure, but I would check the current draws as well.

This may also be a case where it's actually WORTH getting the poco to test the meter - it will cost you some money but they will obviously refund it if they find an issue.

I guess the only other question is whether there is any cathodic protection for well casings or gambian baskets or similar?

I'm no expert ...but if it were me I would shut EVERYTHING off and then look at the outside meter and see if its still turning ..if it is then you need to find that thief. Good luck I feel your pain!

Big Al

In North Central NJ at 17 Cents per KWH, $600 is 3,500 KWH, easy to reach with resistive electric heat. We're running a geothermal heat pump and we hit 2,000+ KWH per month on a cold month.

Lots of posts, and I may have overlooked, but didn't see what wattage your baseboards are rated at, and what your cost per KWH is. I agree, take a look at the meter. If it is one of the older types, with a rotating disk in the horizontal position and clock dials, don't worry about the disk rotating if it is less than a couple per minute. My one rotation on my meter's disk is 7.2 WH, has to turn 140 times to score 1KWH or 17 cents.

jerry_nj, I think he stated he's paying $0.056 per kWh.

I remember reading of a similar case which turned out to be a nail or a screw driven across a couple of AC wires inside a wall. The bills were very high until some detective work found the partial short. It had turned part of the house wiring into a resistance heater. Fortunately, no fire was started.

You may have something similar, or it could be in the service wire leading to your house if you have a remote pole mounted meter as we do.

The point is, as others have stated, you need to turn everything off and start looking for whatever is using that power. Besides the unwanted expense, there is a possibility of fire and even electric shock if that usage is the result of a wiring problem.

If in doubt, call a pro.

so, what did you find?

Yeah what was the next electric bill?

"I remember reading of a similar case which turned out to be a nail or a screw driven across a couple of AC wires inside a wall. The bills were very high until some detective work found the partial short. It had turned part of the house wiring into a resistance heater. Fortunately, no fire was started. "
impossible. it could be possible that a short in the thermostat wiring could cause the ac to run all the time but what you describe is not possible.

I disagree. It would have to be something rare and just so, but I believe it could happen. The nail or screw would have to not be snug enough to cause the breaker to trip but perhaps arcing, and of course once something like that started, resistance would increase so it would be more like an electric heater - or resistor, which would consume current.

I'm not saying it's LIKELY, but possible. I doubt, however, you could use that much electricity due to such a fault, without a fire.

If it's not a faulty meter or similar, I would suspect either an unknown device, or something wired incorrectly.

Perhaps one of the heaters IS running non-stop but you'd think OP would notice.

Or maybe there's a grow-op in the attic if they have one, although they usually bypass the electric meter when they set one up.

"Shockingly, they tell me that past usage during the winter months of 2007 was 13000 kilowatt hours per month! I used 700-800 on average at my personal residence."

This is more than my entire ANNUAL usage on a much larger house.
* Get a Kill-a-Watt and check the fridge
* Turn off all of the baseboard heat (at the breakers) once it is warm enough
* You need an ENERGY AUDIT. Proper insulation and air sealing will greatly reduce your heating costs. The payback will be very fast with the kind of excess usage you have.
* As others have said, a high efficiency heat pump is a good way to go. There is even a tak credit!

did you ever kick off your main breaker and see if the meter was spinnig..ie a neighbor was robbing your power?

My next bill was $177. Oddly enough, for about ten days that month all electrical items were off. The meter was not moving at all. I did find some worn wiring in the electrical line in the well. I replaced that. I will invest in a Blueline meter now.