When we moved to Vermont, our electric bill nearly doubled. We have a larger house, but we’re heating with oil (we’ll talk about that bill another day), barely use air conditioning, have low power/efficient everything… Why is it so high?

I was convinced we had an electrical leak somewhere. Far-fetched, but they happen, especially in ancient homes, and are a major fire risk because that electricity is going somewhere and most likely producing heat.

So I got to work with my Kill-A-Watt (available to borrow now that I’m likely done with it for another decade) – measuring an item or two per day and throwing my findings into a spreadsheet. After around a month of this, the bill checks out ($220ish/mo)!

The little things certainly add up, but I took a look at the big ones to see if we could find savings:

• Water heater – We have a really big electric one. It was replaced not too long ago and is really nice despite being oversized (size actually doesn’t cost a whole lot more; usage does) so the break-even on replacement to something like a heat-pump based unit is simply too far off to justify the change.
• Dryer – We do a lot of laundry between all our exercise and the two munchkins wrecking everything they wear. Did you know a dryer runs at ~5000 watts!? That’s insane and why they have a “double” plug. Electric resistive heat is super inefficient (learned this last year when I experimented with heating individual in-use rooms with electric) and we blow it right out the side of the house. Our air is also super dry. What if we blew that hot, moist air into the house? Is that even possible? It is! $17 (plus $5 for proper hose clamps) and 20 minutes later for a dryer vent bypass, and we’re retaining that heat and using our humidifiers less. Brilliant! We’ll have to see if there is any real difference in our heating bill next winter. Note: this only works with an electric dryer; if you have a gas dryer and install this you will die.
• Stove – This is the cost of eating at home pretty much all the time. Overall, a net savings.
• Fridge – I actually thought ours was running too long/dying, but this measures well within reason so I guess it is fine.
• TV – I think a lot of this cost is our Xbox not being in power-save mode. I could likely toggle that and save some here, but it would be negligible.

So… Electricity is expensive (roughly double what it cost in OR [we pay $.21/kwh despite what this map says]) and as far as I know our home wiring is fine.