What can cause an excessive electricity bill?

Answer 1

Firstly, determine if the excessive bill is based on a reading or an estimate. If it's an estimated bill, confirm the reading before going through the roof. Determine if this is a catch up bill, a reading after a couple of estimates. Your meter isn't broken, the only one thing causes an excessive meter read bill, and that is excessive usage. If it's clear that it's a meter read bill, the electricity has been consumed and you need to determine what's used the power. Electric heaters are a huge power user. Anything in your property that isn't working appropriately will use more power. Keeping in mind the use of electricity is not necessarily someone turning something on, if you have a hot water tank, make sure it's set at an appropriate temperature, and that both elements are working at optimum capacity. Anything that is plugged in, is potentially using power. (Phantom Load) You may not be home during the day, but your house doesn't know that!

Answer 2

That's really quite impossible. The voltage to your house, and to several of your

neighbors' houses, comes from a transformer somewhere on a nearby pole. It

comes to the transformer through heavy wires from a nearby substation, and it

comes to the substation through even heavier wires from the power generating

station. If it's too high entering your house, then it had to have been too high

somewhere back in the chain, and then it's equally too high for many of the

other customers in your neighborhood.

The only way it could happen is during a very brief event with, say, thunderstorms

dancing around a substation, and then it's most likely followed immediately by a

complete power outage.

I would have said that's also impossible, until that exact thing happened right here

on our street not too long ago. During a round of loud thunderstorms, the power

went off for two seconds, came back on for five seconds, and then went off again

for a couple of hours. During that five seconds when the power temporarily came

back on, everything in the house hummed, light bulbs blazed brightly and then half

of them burned out, and the fuses in all the TVs and DVD players failed (which was

a GOOD thing). My speculation was that when lightning hit a substation and the

voltage on one or more of its residential feeders went sky-high, a protective relay

that was supposed to take the station off-line didn't, at least not as soon as it

should have.

Answer 3

A high consumption of power. It could be in the form of an electric furnace in very cold weather. Baseboard heaters with thermostats up full. 300 dollars is in the neighbourhood of 3600 kWh. The first thing I would do on an increase like that would be to phone the power company and get them to take a look at their watt meter to make sure the calibration is still within their specifications.