UCAN

My wife, daughter and I moved into a new-to-us house in August last year. We were a little worried when we first moved in because it is a 100% electric home... But our Aug-Nov bills were just a little higher than when we lived in a condo (~$75 at the condo and now ~$90). We bought a new low-e washer and dryer, put in low-e fluorescent light fixtures and were already in the habit of turning off lights when we weren't in the room. But then December came and it got cold... Our daughter is under 2 years old and we did the same thing we had done the previous winter... We broke out the space heater. We would set the temperature to 70 degrees and heat our daughter's room. We also put a heater in our bedroom but set it to 65... Needless to say, we saw a sudden hike in our bill. It jumped to about $200. Scared of outrageous bills we stopped using our heater and converted to an electric blanket. Our next bill was $270. We then found a leak in our hot water pipe and although we hadn't seen an increase in our water bill we thought it could be the culprit so one afternoon I fixed the leak and our next bill (Feb) was ~$90. Now we were a little confused, but there were some warm days leading into that bill so we thought great! We've fixed our problem. But then March we got a bill for ~$380! What the hell?!?!?! I called SDG&E and was told that our Feb bill had been estimated because the meter reader couldn't (or didn't) actually read the meter. [On a side note, we saw her come up and read the meter that month and there is NO REASON why they wouldn't be able to read the meter. It has been in the same location for about 70 years, there is no fence blocking it, no dogs to deal with, no vegetation in front of it...] So SDGE did their duty and re-calculated our bill so that our 100% eclectic home base line allowances would be reflected over both months. Great! It saved us about $4.00! Now, we have used the heat less, fixed the leaking hot water pipe, don't use a heater at all in the master bedroom, have been bbq outside (therefore not using the electric stove as much), keep the lights off unless we're in the room, make our loads of laundry bigger, take shorter showers, still mostly use low-e lights, and yet our bill was $375! WTF?