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High Energy Bills?
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RELATED LINKS
LEARN WHAT YOU BURN
Find out how much it costs to run common electric-powered household items.
ENERGY SAVING TIPS
Tips on saving energy - and money - on future utilities bills.
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There are a number of reasons your bill could be higher than you expect.
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Weather. A long spell of cold weather, like the deep freeze we experienced this winter, increases most energy bills. This winter was the second-coldest winter in 20 years and the cruellest day,
March 3, was the chilliest on record for that date, says David Phillips, Environment Canada's weather guru. Consider our Monthly Equal Payment Plan to even out high seasonal bills.
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Increased use in your household. If you have a new baby, live-in relatives, tenants or house guests in your household, you can expect higher energy use.
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Change in lifestyle. Have you added a home office or been keeping the house warmer? Perhaps you've bought a hot tub or you now have teenagers taking more showers. All of these lifestyle changes
contribute to higher energy use.
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Home renovations or additions. You'll use more energy to heat and run your home during renovations and by adding floor and window space. If you made energy improvements, but your bill still
went up, chances are that the consumption savings were more than offset by increased gas costs. Check the actual unit consumption, and if it has gone down, then you have saved over what you would have
spent otherwise.
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Longer-than-usual billing period. It may be that your energy consumption isn't actually higher than usual, but that your bill covers a longer period of time.
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Extra appliance use. You may have added new appliances like a computer, or have been using them more. Check out our Learn What you Burn section to see the
operating costs of various appliances.
Other possible factors:
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Extra electric heating or portable space heaters, particularly in winter. A 1500-watt heater costs 11.6 cents an hour or over $2.80 a day if it's running all the time.
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Does your home need "weatherizing"? Ceiling, floors and walls may need more insulation. What about weatherstripping or caulking around doors, windows, pipes and cracks?
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Inaccurate thermostat. Make sure your home-heating thermostat is properly calibrated. The higher the setting, the more energy used. If you aren't paying attention to turning down the thermostat
at night or when no one is home, you're using more energy than you need to. Check out our Energy-Savings Tips for more.
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Extended winter lighting requirements. Did you put up holiday lights? As the days are shorter, lights are on for longer periods of time in the winter. If you use outdoor security lights that
stay on all night, consider putting them on motion sensors to come on only when needed.
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Fireplace dampers left open when not in use. Don't forget to close your damper between fires.
On average, about 50% of home energy use is for space heating, 30% for water heating, 15% for lighting, and appliances the remaining 5%.
Is your neighbour's bill lower? No two homes are alike, and no two households have exactly the same energy-using patterns. Your house's energy use depends on things like the type of heating
system and how the house is constructed. Even for two identically-built houses, the occupants will have different lifestyles, appliances and energy-using (or saving) habits. To see where you may have
opportunities to reduce your home's energy consumption and lower your bills, try our Energy Savings Tips.
Cold weather is measured in degrees on an outdoor thermometer: the colder it gets, the lower the temperature. A thermometer however, shows only how cold it is at a particular moment. To measure
coldness over an entire heating season, utilities use a measurement called heating degree days. These "degree days" are based on the difference between 18°C (64°F) and the
average* outdoor temperature during each 24-hour period throughout the heating season. The guideline temperature of 18°C (64°F) is used because most homes require heating when outdoor
temperatures fall below 18°C.
The greater the number of degree days in a heating season, the colder it is, and the more likely you are to use more electricity and natural gas to heat your home.
Some people find the word days in the term heating degree days confusing. Please keep in mind that heating degree days are not calendar days. There can be many degree days in a 24-hour
calendar day because each degree below 18°C equals one degree day.
To see how heating degree days add up over the heating season, let's consider the following example:
Suppose that on a day in mid February, cold arctic air blows in, and the average outdoor temperature in Kingston drops to a frigid -19°C. The difference between 18°C and -19°C is 37.
Therefore, 37 degree days would be recorded.
We start counting degree days on September 1, at the beginning of the heating season, and keep adding them up for each 24-hour period until the end of the heating season. Over an entire heating season,
thousands of heating degree days are counted. Although no two winters are exactly the same, Kingston usually has about 3500 or more degree days.
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