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No one likes to pay the bills. Personally, I've always had a sore spot in said monthly chore for the electric bill. It's just not a tangible thing. Sure, I understand the mechanism: the more power I use in my home, the more it will cost me at the end of the month. But what is often perplexing to my poor brain is the quantity of the usage. Will falling asleep with the lights for one night cost me an extra dollar -- or ten? Every month I have the same inner monologue, lasting for a solid three or four minutes -- but inevitably, there's just the electronic transfer of funds from my checking account into Pepco's coffers.
That said, when my last two months' electric bills have been about 200% higher than last year, those few contemplative moments suddenly turned into a less-than-composed tirade in front of the laptop.
It turns out I'm not alone.
WTOP ran a quick report this afternoon chronicling some similarly nightmarish bills: monthly electric bills at $479 and $548. Yikes. Members of the Cleveland Park listserv have also been quite vociferous when it comes to their recent electric bills -- with many complaints of bills over $600.
So what gives? Are we all just sucking down energy hand over fist?
This winter has seen more than its fair share of bitterly cold weather -- January was one of the coldest months in recent memory. Is it possible that those of us with electric heating are simply just pushing the thermostat a bit too much? (Ahem, guilty as charged.) Another possibility: many customer's billing periods are changing so that they are being charged for a 35-day period, instead of 28, according to the WTOP report. One week can seem like a short amount of time, but if that week was anything like our first Snowpocolypse of the year, well, your electric usage probably went up as you stayed indoors, out of the elements.
One surefire way to check to make sure your bill is accurate is to compare your usage from this year to the same month last year. If you've got an incredibly high bill, you just might be using a lot more electricity this year -- this could be due a big holiday season purchase biting back. (Those new toys just don't power themselves, you know.) Also, always check to make sure that your last few bills haven't simply been estimated. If so, Pepco might have finally just caught up this month with an actual reading of your meter.
You tell us, D.C. Have you seen a noticeable spike in your electric bill in the last couple months? Are you planning on contesting it with the electric company?
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In our Adams Morgan studio (400 sq ft) we've paid over $200 for the last two months. Just moved here in June so we don't have last year to compare to, but it seems really high.
We're in AdMo too and we've been paying upwards of $200 too. I can't figure it out.
We've switched as many electronics as possible to power strips so we can cut it off from even its standby setting. We'll see if it has any effect.
so how should i abbreviate "bloomingdale" so i can fit it with the cool, new york wannabe names like "cohi", "admo", and "noma"?
BloMi
"BloMi"
I think we have a winner!
yeah, it looks like you've hit a home run there, aaronsinger.
bdale?
we got a space heater. we will see if that works too.
My last two apartments my winter electric bill was around $90 a month for 550-625 sq ft. My current unit has radiator heat provided for free, which I am grateful for!
My January bill for my December usage was the highest it's ever been, both in terms of energy used and the dollar amount. This is bizarre since I wasn't even here for two of those weeks so I shouldn't have consumed that much for the month. Everyone in my building has been complaining about unusually high bills, and it wasn't that cold in December. Something's fishy here.
^^^^ This.
I was out of our apartment for three weeks, my roommate for two, in Dec and yet we still had a ridiculously high charge in January.
DC Fox 5 has a video to watch on this issue.
I guess I'm lucky, but I haven't seen any change. My bill for last December: $74.99, my bill for this December: $77.39. The highest bill I've ever had was October of 2007 at $102.67. I would definitely check into those bills, something sounds off.
I just moved to Capitol Hill and am having the same problem. We live in a small apartment and have been getting $500 bills. We currently owe Pepco $900 for 2 months of electricity and since we just moved in we have nothing to compare it to. None of our neighbors in our apartment building are paying high bills.
We've been battling Pepco and our apartment building and nobody wants to resolve this problem for us. They checked our meter and said it is correct. Does anyone have any tips for us of what could be wrong?
One place to start would be to check out the DCPSC website. http://www.dcpsc.org/
Your bill should have a year's worth of consumption figures on it - compare them to see. I think you can go further back than a year online at Pepco.com with their My Account service.
dont give up! we got an outrageous $2,500 bill from Pepco, and refused to pay it--the meter was obviously broken, but it took months and months for Pepco to "realize" their mistake.
call up DC's Office of People's Counsel and file a Consumer Complaint against them.
If trying to figure out how much leaving the lights on at night is costing you (probably no more than 20 or 25 cents - nowhere near the dollar or ten you worry about), you should buy yourself a Kill-a-Watt -just search for it on Amazon. It'll cost you about $20 and you can measure power consumption (kWh, Amps, Voltage, Watts, power factor, and Hz) and find out what's really using up the electricity.
For most homes, heating & AC (especially electrically powered heat pumps) and water heating will make up the bulk of your electric bill. Big appliances - washers and driers more than anything else - are next on the list. My refrigerator, for example, uses about .075kWh per hour, so in a typical month, it will use about 53kWh, and with Pepco's 11-12 cents/kWh, it will cost me between 5 and 6 dollars in electricity.
The biggest culprit for high electricity bills during cold spells like we've seen for the past few weeks is poor insulation. That's one of the reasons we've been hearing so much from the new administration on energy efficiency. The *single* most cost-effective way to deal with our energy problem in this country? Caulk.
Even when it's off, plasma teevees suck as much energy as an inefficent fridge.
And I second "BloMi." Junkpunching myself that I didn't think of it first.
Jesus tapdancing christ.... $200 for electricity in a STUDIO? I had an 850-sq-ft apartment in NYC and don't think I ever had an electric bill greater than $50/month (it was probably closer to $30 most months) the entire time I lived there. Granted, I had radiator heat, but STILL.... something sounds very wrong here, people.
Word to the wise: when you're not at home, turn the heat off. Turn it back on when you return home. That's what I did when I had gas-forced air and had to pay for it.
More like $250 for a studio, twice so far. We have electric radiators along the floor and have since switched to a space heater.
Re: "word to the wise". BAD IDEA. If you do that, you have to pay to heat your place each night. It is supposedly more efficient to keep your place at a static temperature at all time. Its costs less to maintain that temp than it does to heat it up each night. But then again, I am the guy w $250 heating bill for a studio, I wouldn't listen to me either.
The simple 'turn your heat off when you're not at home'-trick doesn't help the high bills. We leave the heat off all day, turn it on at 60 degrees for about three hours when we get home from work, and then keep it off at night. The bill for our Capitol Hill home has been steadily increasing even though our heat and electric-use has not. Our bill this past month was $286, after a previous high of about $130 - I hate to think what it would have been had we kept the heat on all day and night. But it sucks to know that you're paying close to $300 just to be freezing in your home all the time.
Wow, glad I just moved into a place with free electric.
Crap, I posted something, hit refresh and it disappeared - still having trouble with the sign on feature sometimes.
Anyway, I'll just reiterate that I must be really lucky or PEPCO hasn't decided to scam me yet. The figures some of you are posting are insane!! I have a 600 sq ft one-bedroom in Adams Morgan, and I usually pay between $50-$75 a month - and everything in my place is electric (heat pump, stove, etc.) I haven't seen a jump in my bill yet, but will keep a close eye on my next one.
I think the main problem is that customers are left to trust a corporation to truthfully tell us how much we owe. Pepco is wholly responsible for installing, reading, and maintaining the meters. We could all be getting ripped off and we'd have no way of knowing.
No other system works like this! The situation is akin to only being able to shop at one grocery store that doesn't even mark the prices of any of its products. Then, when you go to check out, you don't even get the total cost until 30 days after you've consumed the food. That's a ridiculous way of doing business. I do not know why consumers continue to put up with such foolishness. If gas pumps, supermarket registers, and taxicab meters can be regulated and tested for accuracy, then there's no reason why meters shouldn't as well.
Hear that? That's the sound of PEPCO shutting off your electricity.
It seems to me that you should know how much you pay per KWh. And you could read your meter yourself to see how much electricity you actually use. Then do the math.
Whether or not the meter is functioning correctly is another matter.
By the way, has PEPCO had a rate increase? If usage is the same but the bill went up, that's the only explanation. Surely someone could find out.
Cool it on the logic and math econbob - those of us trying to convert indignation into electricity have found a limitless energy source among DCist commenters.
I do know exactly how much my energy per KWh costs. The only problem is that like many DC apartment buildings, we do not have actual meters stuck on the side of the building, but rather an electronic master meter in the basement that determines how much power is being distributed to each unit. Pepco then accesses the meter via the internet to download that month's "reading". There's no way for residents to actually look at their own meter reading; we're completely reliant on Pepco telling us that it's correct.
Further, those Kill-a-Watt devices are great for finding out how much energy a lamp or TV sucks up, but I can't exactly plug them into big energy items like HVACs, water heaters, ovens, etc. Plus, those devices are neat but I'd love to see somebody challenge their Pepco bill using data from a Kill-a-Watt.
C:"Hi. My Pepco bill is too high."
P:"Your meter reading indicates you used 450KWh of electricity."
C:"But I didn't! My Kill-a-watt device calculated that I used 300KWh this service period!"
P:"..."
C:"Hello?"
P:"Sir, pay your bill or we shut off your power." *Click*
[I]The only problem is that like many DC apartment buildings, ...Pepco then accesses the meter via the internet to download that month's "reading".[/I]
Ah, I see. You'd think new technology would be better. And that there'd be a way for a customer to see the meter.
I have gas heat, and my bill has still been double what it should be for the last several months. I've been putting in CFLs everywhere so that my whole home life now has a sickly greenish hue, but it still has only made a small dent.
By the way, there are a couple of gizmos on the market now that automatically monitor your power consumption, and even translate it into terms of dollars and cents. So it doesn't have to just be about trust.
I don't know about my electric bill, but my gas bill was over $300 this month. The highest it's ever been.
We moved into our 1 bedroom apt in August and encountered the same problem. Our first bill (which was for a two-week period, one of which we were out of town for) was $85! Our next bill was even higher. When I looked at the kilowatt usage, we were using more electricity in our 500 sq ft apartment than my parents were using in a 2200 sq ft home.
When I called Pepco they said the first month was an accurate reading (ha...) so I requested a meter read. Our bill is now averaging $15/month. Talk to your building manager (if you live in an apt) to have Pepco come out each month and take your reading (otherwise they are lazy and "guesstimate"). The prop manager/owner CAN drop off a set of keys too so you do not have to let them in every month.
I think PEPCO has a problem really. I've lived in the same building for the past 4 years and every month have used between 300 and 400 kWh. In December they said I had used 1,350 kWH. That's not right. It's more than 4 times as much. I really think there is a computer problem or something. I call, angrily and they're coming out to read the meter again.
No problems in Va. Maybe it's just a DC/MD thing?
I remember reading last year that Pepco had applied for a rate increase and bills would go up.
Spsolomon: That's a common misconception or myth I hear at my work (consumer/environmental non-profit). It is not more efficient to keep your place at a static temperature all the time. Your heater would be running all day as opposed to just a night when you are home. It doesn't cost less to maintain constant heat versus heating it up each night.
I live in a 2 bedroom one level condo on U street. I am always very conservative with my heat, never above 70, turn it down everytime i leave, etc. My bill in November was $80 and December jumped to $386 and $348 in January. Both were accurate reads and both were for a 30 day period. It was the kWH used that skyrocketed which doesn't make any sense. My meter is in a room that i'm not allowed to get into (apparently too dangerous b/c of the high voltage) so hard to tell what is going on. I called Pepco to get an energy audit done but they don't do that service anymore so instead i'm on the 2nd week of waiting for them to come service my meter. Everyone at Pepco have been sympathetic they just aren't able to do much. I believe my bill went up due to a new heater installed in the stairwell next to my unit, but of course the property manager at my condo refuses to acknowledge that might be the case! So frustrating!
I live in an 1200 sqft 2BR/2BA apartment in Rockville and our highest bill ever was $200 (which seemed like a lot at the time). For December, we received a bill of $500 and were totally blown away. I called Pepco and they reduced it to $350 (adjusted the reading since we just moved upstairs to another new apartment (no prior readings)). I still felt this is too high so the billing department am now waiting until the next reading to see what is up. I know its cold outside, but we ran the heat last winter...
i rent a 1200 sq foot 2 BR/2 BA condo in mt pleasant, shared with one other person.
our bill for December was for 2173 kwh/month, and cost $283 for a 35 day cycle, a week of which we were out of town. i called PEPCO to complain and they said they were taking an actual reading -- they drive by with an electronic meter reader. so it wasn't their fault, and must be our energy usage.
we talked to the condo owner who agreed to replace the heat pump and install a programmable thermostat.
January's bill was $260; 2063 kwh for a 29 day cycle.
I cannot imagine how we are using this much energy. We are extremely energy conscious -- wash clothes in cold water and air dry them; unplug everything when not in use; never have the heat over 68; don't have a plasma tv or other big appliance energy-suck; always turn off the lights when we're not home.
i know it's cold, but DAYUM. i have requested a meter check; the process takes 4-6 weeks.
could those of you with high bills post your kwh usage? that might be useful..
Does anyone have any ideas on what kind of remediation we can take against Pepco? Do we organize a mass protest? Inundate their customer service lines with complaints? Bring a formal complaint to DSPSC?
I personally would like either a legitimate explanation or some kind of solution.
One other thing you dawgs with electric heat ought to consider -- if you have heat pumps, which is what most forced-air heat is these days, there are two modes of heating -- normal and "emergency" or "backup."
A heat pump is like a reverse air conditioner, sucking ambient heat out of the air outside and transferring it into your apartment. In normal mode, the heat pump is just doing its thing, and the air coming out of the vents should feel coolish (which is because room temperature air, when moving, feels cool).
In "emergency" mode, the supplemental heating system kicks in, which is vastly less efficient and more expensive. That will happen when the temperature gets too cold outside for the heat pump to run effectively (which has probably happened a lot this winter during those bitter cold days we've had). But I've seen people also unknowingly set their thermostats to this mode, which means this inefficient backup system runs all the time. If you do that, your bills will be huge.
There's definitely something going on. How do we get major news outlets to pick up on this?
My bill runs from $65 to $85 a month in the cold months for a 900 sq. ft. apartment and I stay comfortably warm. Don't have a lot of electronic toys and try to unplug most things I'm not using daily. My bills have been normal this winter, but several people in my apartment building have complained about large bills the past few months and say they haven't increased their usage. What's going on?
In an Alexandria 600 sq-ft studio, I pay ~$50/month for gas in the winter, ~$20 electric/month, and I'm home most days with a computer and tv on [thanks to being unemployed].
Something smells fishy about PepCo in the district.
It's not PepCo, it's Pepco.
It sounds like most of the commenters have electric heat... it should be obvious why those bills are way up this winter.
heh - as of today you can try to get your answers in 140 characters or less: https://twitter.com/pepcoconnect.
i have a 2 bedroom, 1 bath plus den in Capitol Hill which is FREEZING despite having one of our stupid heaters on high all day, we do not have central heat or even adjustable heat, we have 2 radiators that have either on or off and hot or cold. this is our first year in the apt. and our highest AC bill (keeping the same radiator on high AC all day)was only about 180 bucks, we've had 2 300 dollar bills thus far, and our air temp in the apt averages about 58 degrees.
Make no mistake about it, we're taking it in the shorts. Over the past 2-3 years, the winters have been rather mild. I'm sure that their revenue projections have fallen short as a result of such. Sure they increase your bill during summer months as consumption peaks, but they probably have some revenue calculation model that will only allow them so much of an increase. All along they knew that they would charge exorbitant rates this winter to cover some of the revenue shortfalls as well as increase in energy production. Now that the consumer outcry is so overwhelming, keep an eye on your electric bill for the next couple of months and see if it doesn't "magically" decrease relative to what it has been the past couple of months. Then they'll give you the 'ol: consumption-levels-have-declined-thereby-creating-lowered-energy-costs-to-consumers-b.s.
For my 300 sg ft place in Thomas Circle, my electricity bill has never been over $40 a month, and that's with running the dishwasher and washer/dryer each about 3x a week.
I think the hot air from my neighbor's hipster pretense might contribute to keeping down my heating bill, but still, I'm not complaining (not about pepco at least).
Actually, I noticed this as well, and I am glad I am not alone. My electric bill went from 200 dollars last December to 350 this December. I am dreading to see January. And I had less electronics THIS year, as I had had most of them stolen over the summer. I keep the house around 65 degrees, and sometimes never turn the heat on. Pepco has some 'splaining to do.
I don't think this is a matter of more usage. Something is terribly wrong. I have a vacant property in DC. There is no heat on and only the refigerator, stove, and alarm system are plugged in. My bill has consistently been around $24, but for the past two months it has been around $100!! Electricity usage has not changed and an extra week in the billing cycle cannot explain such a significant jump. Pepco has told me they will investigate, but I'm not holding my breath.
I remember when the DC Council deregulated Pepco we were promised savings and thus "cheaper" rates. Well, the opposite has happened. Now, the Mayor is proposing a new surcharge in order to pay for street lights. Cha-ching!
My bill definitely soared the last few months, and I KNOW I haven't been using extra. I even blogged about it in quite a bit of detail, outlining all my energy-saving efforts and how little they've done to help me save...
I just moved into an 800 sq ft basement apartment and got my first bill for 5.5 weeks of electricity (I started my account mid-billing cycle). If someone could explain to me how one eco-conscious person could possibly consume 5,460 KWHs in that time period, I'd love to hear it.
I was expecting a bill of about $130...I got a bill for over $700.
Any suggestions?