Woah

My (electrical) power company when the send out the bill tells you how your consumption is comparing to this time last year and mine has gone up by nearly 50%.  WHAT?

This legitimately freaked me out (especially as someone who in the early days of my blog got mentioned on THEIR blog for my reduction efforts!)

I've been trying to think what might be upping my usage by so much as I'm using the same fans/A/C as last year and I don't think it was as hot (knock on wood) this summer as last so you'd think I'm using them less if anything?  I wrote them a contact email saying like I have no idea what's happening here is there any way for me to find out what machine in my place is doing this? And I'm pretty sure the answer is no, so I've been trying to think through things and the ONLY thing I've done probably more this year than last is run my air purifiers.

We haven't had much in the way of wild fire smoke to be honest, but I use a site called FireSmoke and when there was even a skiff of smoke I'd turn those puppies on (one in my main room and one in my bedroom) and run them 24/7 whereas I think in previous years I've really only run them when the shadows turn orange?  (So when there's a significant amount of smoke, enough that you "see" it and notice.)

I looked it up and the purifiers I use are apparently only equivalent to the draw of a lightbulb but maybe having a lightbulb turned on for 24 hours a day 7 days a week for a few weeks at a time is enough to have raised my consumption levels by that amount????  It's legit my only guess unless my fridge or something has gone rogue? (Like a "parasitic drain" you sometimes hear about on cars, you know?)

So needless to say, I turned off my air purifiers (yeah, I guess I have money anxiety as I seem to value reducing my bill over having delightfully pure air... sigh) and I don't know if that will make a difference on my next bill, but yeah I was totally upset and bummed to hear that my bill had gone up by such a large amount when it doesn't feel like I'm doing anything much different.  (Like I don't suddenly have a grow op in here or an EV I'm charging or anything!!!!  Know what I mean?  Sigh.)

So I'll try to be a bit more mindful of things I guess and I'll be bummed if it is the air purifiers as I do like feeling like I'm "treating" myself to extra clean air, you know?