What's making my electrical usage soar? HomeImprovement

I live in a ranch house with a full basement and crawlspace attic. Natural gas is used for the heat, hot water, oven, stove, and dryer. I moved in about nine years ago. Five years ago my house was using about 1100 kWh per month (actual meter reading, not estimated). Every year since then my electrical usage has gone up to a point where my house is now using close to 1700 kWh and I have no idea why.

There have been no significant electrical additions to my house over the past five years, and in fact overall I've reduced (or so I thought) my electrical footprint. I used to have five computers running 24/7 in the house; over the years I got rid of two of them, two of the remaining ones stay asleep whenever they're not in use, and the remaining computer is a fairly low-power Mac mini that doesn't do much beyond being a Plex server. The refrigerator in the house used to be a rusty, circa-1995 model with leaky gaskets; last year I replaced it with a brand new energy efficient refrigerator. We're pretty frugal with the central air conditioner; last year we had it running a grand total of 36 days, and the year before that it was 31 days. There have always been two TVs in the house, and the small electrical appliances — microwave, toaster oven, instant-hot water heater at the kitchen sink, hair dryer, etc — have not seen radical increases in usage over the years. Nearly every light bulb in the house is either CFL or LED. I have three game consoles (Wii, PS3, and PS4) but they're all asleep when not in use, and when the are in use it's not really heavy use (I don't play many games).

The ONLY two purchases which might hold a clue:

1. About 18 months ago I bought a Brother MFC-9970cdw. This stays on 24/7, but is set up to go into sleep mode fairly quickly as we don't print very often.
2. Last summer I purchased a dehumidifier for the basement, specifically this model. It has been running 24/7 since then.

But it's also worth noting that my electrical usage has been climbing steadily at a rate of about 100-150 kWh/year over the past five years, which predates the purchase of either of those two devices.

Where-oh-where is my electricity leaking?

Submitted January 12, 2016 at 02:14AM by bubonis http://ift.tt/1JG712O HomeImprovement