Why is my electric bill so effing high?

[Drew]

So I just got my electric/heating bill for this month - $190 freaking dollars. Now to many of you that own your own houses, that probably isn't too high. However, I live in a 1100 square foot apartment. It's fairly new (2000), and I'm on the lower level corner. It feels like im paying for a 2,000 square foot house.

Here's the breakdown:

$130 electricity
$60 gas

I can somewhat see the gas, as I have been home all month (vacation) and kept it on. However, if i keep it off the apartment hovers at roughly 63 degrees. I have it set for 68. Heating 5 degrees for 3/4 of the month still even seems kind of high to me, considering my heater is the only gas thing in the entire apartment.

As for electricity I'm completely freaking baffled. I have everything off from the hours of 7 - 4 ish EVERYDAY, minus a laptop that runs (set it up for minimum power consumption); after talking with the electric company they told me this should only cost 7 bucks a month total to run if you have it on 24/7. The only time we (roomate and i) are using electricity is form the hours of 4-11 ish...in which we have our main computers on and small tv's (13 inch and 20 inch). I dont think running 2 tvs and 3 computers should make the bill run in the 100's.

Anyone else think this is high or have any ideas what it could be?

[gmcookvt]

That is pretty high. The only time I see high electric bills is if you have electric heat. But it doesn't look like you do. Try unplugging your appliances when not in use (or use a power strip). Even if you shut them off they are still drawing electricity from the wall.

[grayure]

63 degrees is actually a little warm for comfort, i think. I went into an office today where the temperature was in the 20s centigrade and i found it stultifyingly hot. If you're already that warm, why would you want to heat your home at all?

Sorry to be snarky. Anyway, have you got a fridge? They use a lot of power because they're constantly on. Another thing which can happen is that poor wiring constantly arcs and consumes power. You can deal with that by turning off the trip switches.

Also, you can get a plug which measures electricity consumption. I suggest you try that. There's also a detection device which can pick up poor wiring, and remote control plugs which allow you to turn off everything which was on standby previously in one go. I suggest you look into some of that.