Our electric bill has been running pretty high even though it hasn’t been that cold and we’ve been supplementing with wood heat. Decided to track down the culprit and hooked up an energy usage monitor to one of our 5 sub panels. Gonna check the other 4 over the course of the next few days.
I would definately look at the water heater if it’s old. Might have a lot of sediment built up. That and duct leaks and hvac filter. Best to collect a baseline before you make changes though.
Thats a good suggestion. We have two water heaters. This one is 26 years old and is somewhat hard to maintain because of its location. I’ve been dragging my feet on doing anything with it since I’d ultimately like to eliminate it.
This stupid house initially had three water heaters. A. 110 volt little heater that only ran the kitchen sink and the dishwasher. A 55 gallon water heater to run one bathroom and the laundry. And a third 60 or 65 gallon water heater to run two bathrooms and that was it. Isn’t that crazy? I removed the 110 volt water heater and the 60 gallon water heater, and now I need to replace the 55 with a heat pump water heater. This is probably something worth doing. It should consume a lot less electricity and I intend to disable the resistance heater for it. I will get more capacity to help.
That stupid 55 gallon water heater is framed into a wall, which is patently insane.
I wish you luck and I would strongly suspect the water heater is your culprit.
You might also check for hot wster leaks somewhete.