Summer is here and, as expected, most households are using more electricity than they were a couple of months ago. As the Advise Guys have discussed previously, there are a variety of problems that can occur with household appliances and equipment that can cause an increase in electricity use. When you see your bill rise though, how can you determine whether the increase you’re seeing is normal or due to a problem in the home? As your trusted energy advisor, South River EMC has a few resources available to help you.

Your Monthly Statement

The information included on your monthly billing statement is one way to determine if your electricity use is normal. On the back of your statement, take a look at the graph marked “Energy Usage History”. This section of the bill lays out the past 13 months billing history in bar graph form. The table underneath offers a comparison between the current month, previous month, and same billing period last year. Using this data, you can make a fairly accurate determination on whether your bill is normal for the season or not. Around 50 percent of the monthly energy use in a home can be attributed to the heating and/or air-conditioning system, which makes energy use fairly predictable seasonally. For this reason, it’s best to compare the current months energy use to the same month last year, since weather patterns are normally similar.

SmartView

Since temperatures from day to day can vary wildly, detailed daily energy use data is valuable when determining if your energy use is normal or elevated due to a problem. Through our website sremc.com, members can view their daily energy use and temperature information using a tool called SmartView. The blue and gray bars represent daily energy use totals, and the red and blue lines represent the high and low temperatures for the day. Using the SmartView bar graph, look for days when the temperature was relatively low, followed by days when the temperature increased significantly (or vice versa). You should see a drastic difference in electricity use, showing much lower usage on cool days verses higher usage on warmer days. If the differences in usage between cool days and hot days isn’t drastic, that could indicate an issue with equipment or behavior that may be producing higher usage.