Hello!
I just moved into my first apartment and I'm having some trouble determining what's going on with my electricity bill. It's a one bedroom apartment, and my energy usage is way above what I thought it would be. According to my power bills, I used 570 kWh in July, up to 837 in August, and 846 in September. Since I am renting I have no way to determine if this usage is correct for sure, but I think it is, because I've noticed another problem.
I'd suspected my usage might be high due to my computers - I have a desktop and a laptop that were on all the time. After my 846 kWh usage, I decided to make them hibernate after a period of inactivity instead. I'm now thinking that's not the issue.
Last night, it was cool and rainy in eastern Iowa, so I turned off the air conditioner and opened my windows. I set the system to OFF at the thermostat, turned the computers off, and went to sleep. It was about 55 degrees outside all night. When I woke up, I felt warm, and checked the thermostat, only to discover that it was 79 degrees inside the apartment... with the windows to a much cooler outside wide open, computers off, heating definitely not on by mistake. The only things that would have been running are the refrigerator and the water heater. Where could all this heat be coming from? I would figure my computers, even if they're on, might put out enough heat to raise the ambient temperature a few degrees, but not that much, and they were off, so that's certainly not it.
I program my thermostat in the summer for 80 degrees when I am away, and 75 when I am home. I was trying to match what is about the outside temperature so the AC wouldn't work much during the day, and so it wouldn't have to work super hard to cool a very hot apartment at the end of the day. I am now thinking the energy usage is because the AC must be running all of the time, under the assumption that if it's 80 degrees inside during a cool night with no sunlight, that it must want to get up to 90, 100, 110 if I weren't using AC during the day. I do cover my windows with light-blocking shades, so it shouldn't be the greenhouse effect, and certainly not at night.
If something in the apartment building really is generating heat then at least I should be OK once it gets really cold outside, because I can turn off the AC and never turn the heat on and it should stay livable, so hopefully my usage will drop off dramatically in winter. It's a newer apartment building, central air and gas heating, so it's not like the landlord forgot to turn the heat off last year and the radiator is heating the place up.
Does anyone have any ideas? It's going to be 70 degrees or less all week, so I plan to repeat my experiments the next few nights to see if the data is consistent. Maybe next year I can get a Nest and shut climate control off entirely until I am ready to head home, and just turn it on remotely. At this point, I don't have any worries that another apartment was accidentally wired into my circuit; if it really is getting that warm then I am sure the AC is working like crazy while I am gone at work and I really am using the electricity. I'm just stumped. I can't think of anything that would cause the place to heat up that much, with the windows open, at night, in the rain. Anyone ever have a similar experience? What caused it?
Submitted September 30, 2015 at 12:54AM by AlexG2490 http://ift.tt/1KPxW6z Frugal
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