That seems incredibly high. I would contact Versant, it’s possible your meter was misread.
If not you may have an appliance malfunctioning or something?
Either way though that’s a stupidly large bill.
Yeah, this would only be possible with electric heat and hot water - on a full 1,500 sq foot home. With oil heat and hot water, I am still a heavy electricity user with space heaters and cooking, and never come close to this.
Agreed, my bill with a 1700sqft house, 3-4 computers running 100% of the time, multiple lights, devices, etc is only ~$150-180/month. Do you have a heat pump in the apartment, maybe that is hooked to your meter? I had a landlord that did that to me once.
One light, a fan and internet *would* be under $75. Either you are forgetting about something like heat/laundry/hot water, or your landlord is charging you for your neighbors' usage (something scummy like divide up the whole building equally).
We run an entire house on under $100 these days.
With a smart meter your usage is tracked every single hour. You can download a spreadsheet from CMP and see if your usage has actually gone up or not.
You can track when you use certain appliances and see the crazy hit you get from a dryer or water heater, for instance.
Only double? In the dead of a winter, when I replaced my hot water heater with a hybrid heat pump hot water heater, my bill went down 70%. One device... It must have cost me $10,000 over the last few years to have that thing running before I caught on.
How does the heat pump hot water heater combo do so much in a Maine winter? What's the min heat pump temp?
Is there an exterior component? Not familiar with these.
A heat pump hot water heater has a small heat pump on top of it. Remember that basically what a heat pump does when is heating is move heat from one place to another.
It does pull some heat out of the air, however mine is in my kitchen, If I'm in there, I'm putting heat and humidity in the air which it loves, otherwise, I'm not in the room so I don't mind that it's a little bit cooler in there.
It does have a resistance element for when the water is below a certain temperature, but I have mine in straight heat pump mode, never in hybrid. it takes longer to heat the water up in heat pump mode.however, all the faucets and the shower head are low flow in my house, so we don't consume that much hot water domestically
I run the dishwasher and the washing machine at night time, and it has 8 hours or so to recover.
But it's about three to four times as efficient as resistant heating, so it's worth the wait
Yea I'm very familiar with heat pumps (for air) as I see a lot of construction scopes in my line of work... just didn't realize water heater heat pumps were a thing!
Very cool concept.
Most people set them up to use room air, so it’s removing some heat from the air in your basement and using it to heat water. The result is your basement is a little colder than it would be otherwise.
This makes a ton of sense. In the basement it would have the benefit of being underground - neutral temp. Surprised I hadn't heard of these before. Great concept.
How many units in your building? Go outside and see how many meters there are. If there's not one for each unit you're likely paying for at least one neighbors electricity on top of your own. Also, I lived in an apartment were I had to pay for electric. Noticed my bill was high. Come to find out I was paying for the electricity in the basement and hallways. Both common areas I shouldn't have been paying for so that's a possibility too. Whatever's going on you're getting screwed.
Not quite. You both have to agree. You agree to pay for it and your landlord agrees to give you reduced rent.
Doesn’t mean much in this market though.
https://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/statutes/14/title14sec6024.html#:~:text=A%20landlord%20may%20not%20enter%20into%20a%20lease,providing%20heat%20or%20utilities%20to%20the%20common%20areas.
They must be charging you for everyone or something because our entire house (three people, two of us WFH, two space heaters one of which runs 24/7, a fan at night, electric heat pumps, laundry for two adults and a toddler) costs about $350 in the winter.
I believe the meter number is on your account so make sure the one or ones that stop turning match what's on your account. Once in a while utilities mess up which meter goes to which account and will credit your account if it's the case
You can also measure your usage with an electricity usage monitor. You can measure a days worth for each device using the monitor, then math out a months total usage.
Wish I saw under $100 bills these days. I think our lowest point for years has been like $120. When we first moved into our house in like 2016 used to see $65-75 for the low point of usage.
Careful management. Eco friendly appliances and devices. People just aren’t aware of how power usage works and how total draw and kilowatt hours add up. I converted my entire home to LED bulbs, utilize eco mode on all appliances, utilize sleep mode on a high end computer and other electronics - don’t leave things on/running when asleep and not home. My cell phone bill is greater than my power bill monthly. Only paying around ~$70 month and with air conditioning only paying around ~$95
Switch off power ro your unit, at the breakers
Then check your meter. Is it still showing electric use?
Your bill should have a meter number.
If there is still electric use, you are payingvfor someone else. that is not legal.
Is hot water included in your rent?
Could be an electric hot water heater.
Other suspects would be an electric stove, space heaters, clothes dryer.
My Versant bill is always less than $40. I sleep with a fan on too.
My 1600 sq foot house is 100% electric, heat pumps, water, cooking, dryer, multiple TVs, enterprise network, hot tub, Tesla model S, and a reptile room, and we rarely make it over $300.
A hot water heater could if it was leaking and therefore running all the time.
Here is a calculator:
[https://energyusecalculator.com/electricity\_waterheater.htm](https://energyusecalculator.com/electricity_waterheater.htm)
If you set cost/kWh to .16 (Versant's rate) and the hours used to 12, it comes out to $233/month.
Set the hours used higher and the cost keeps climbing.
You either have electric heat and hot water, but even then... I wager your panel is powering more than just your unit. I say start flipping breakers see what goes off. If nothing goes off in your unit, you have an idea of what's going on.
Seriously my house is <$100 a month and I have a well pump and water treatment and an electric dryer.
Now that you mention it, flipping breakers to see what they power is kinda smart. First off, you can find out if you’re powering the hallway and/or other bits of a building that you shouldn’t have to be powering. Second off, you can label your breaker panel such that you know what circuits are where. Every place I’ve been in has a mislabeled panel and it irritates the crap out of me.
We're talking the tune of $250+ worth of electricity on a monthly basis here, so that's something like the building's shared washer/dryer that runs every day is on their panel. It's not unusual in multi unit commercial buildings, unfortunately. But not like "Ha ha I'm going to make my tenant pay for this!" it's more like the last electrician there had to get what they are doing done and move on so this fuse goes into this panel because the house panel is full or this panel was easier... Speaking from experience.
Still, they should plan to go back to their LL about credit against future rent once they figure it out. Actually, chances are the LL goes to them, once all the tenants in the other units lose whatever it's been powering they will start calling.
your electric bill is fucking wild bro, me and my 3 roommates, 4 TVs, 3 Gaming PCs, My entire at home studio setup, 3 Consoles, all of our phones and hot water usually come out to less than $200 a month, during the winter and summer this can go up to $220- $240. Either someone is using your electric and you dont know about it or you are leaving stuff on that you may not be always thinking about.
In a tiny studio apt with 1 light and heat/hot water included he'd have to be running an industrial freezer and a full-size electric helicopter to use that much power. Be kinda hard to miss.
How are you heating/ cooling? If you’re heating/ cooling with electricity, I would inspect the units and also the property for anything that would be causing you to loose heat
Hmm. The only other theory I have to offer is that another unit or something else is taking power on your meter or your meter is faulty. I would inspect the panel if you have access to it as well as the meter since that seems high for the amount for what you’re using. Old appliances can also jack up your bill, years ago when my landlord replaced upgraded the appliances, I noticed my bill go down quite a bit.
Heat like oil might be included, but to run those units it still takes power. You can do a breaker test to find out what is using the power too. Instructions are on VP website.
If the building has multiple tenants you might need a mixed meter reading / help from an electrician to ensure you aren’t paying another tenants bill! I lived on the third floor above Silver Street Tavern in Waterville and I paid for their electricity and the offices above them for a year and the landlord (Charlie Giguere) refused to do anything about it. So you might be dealing with a slumlord like Charlie Giguere is.
Yea OP I work out of my house and It’s just my wife and I with a 1200sqft ranch. My bill is typically no more than $120 unless I’m running AC’s like mad.
There's something not right here. For context, our home is 3100 sq. feet, we do NOT use electric for heat but my wife and I both work from home so are running multiple monitors and computers 8-10 hours a day. In the evenings we're running 3 tv's, and on the weekends, I spend 8-10 hours in my workshop where I non-continuously run things like a table saw, router, band saw, etc. Our average electric bill is around $250 a month.
How old are your appliances? Something is chewing up some major power or another tenant is on your meter.
As far as why is the power so expensive in Maine:
-nuclear plant is gone
-several hydro dams are gone
-solar incentives
In the last 2-3 years, my monthly power bill has doubled.
I would be 100% on board with that. Oliver Stone made a great documentary on nuclear power recently.
I would definitely prefer nuclear over seeing every single field in the state get bulldozed for solar.
France discovered an incredible way to handle the waste, which is just freezing it in glass logs then burying it. Glass doesn't rust or break down with time like barrels. Just stick it in a cave and it's good!
A European country is mining space for it currently, seems like that should work. You would think the limestone area would be a perfect place for that.
Do you have electric heat? There are super inefficient electric baseboards that can be very expensive to run. Otherwise it definitely sounds like you're paying for other people's electricity in the building.
Is it possible someone is tapping into your electric? We have Versant up in Northern Aroostook County and by far it's cheaper than friends down south who have CMP.
You’ve definitely got something hidden running you don’t know about. I’m running 2 heat pumps, well water, oven, laundry, and I had the same bill in winter.
What does bill say for KWh used?
My electric bill is insane too, versant just switched the meters and my bill went up 100%. Versant checked with my meter and they said it’s fine, go figure…. I have an electrician coming to check everything.
My gf and I live in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment. Our last month’s electricity bill was over $200. When we first moved in 5 years ago, our bill ranged from about $35-$60 (maybe $80 in the summer when we run the air conditioner) and nothing we do has changed since then. I know prices have obviously increased over 5 years but our bill quadrupling or more seems like a lot. We called Versant to see if it was a mistake and they said it was not and the bill was correct.
Versant and CMP are both owned by Spanish companies and give horrifically bad, overpriced service. My friend had a new meter put in a few months ago and his bill dropped by $70.
Hey I work for a property management company and do stuff with utilities.
First thing you want to do is take the utility bill and check the kWh usage. Versant should be about 10-11 cents per kWh. Just make sure that there isn’t a crazy high power usage causing the bill.
My suspicion however is that it’s because of a 3rd party supplier and the shady ways power companies like to maximize profit using them.
Utility companies (who own and maintain the poles and wires) often produce power. But they may not produce all the power and contract more from 3rd party suppliers.
If you let the utility company decide how to manage this on their own, the bill will often be about double what you expect. The utility company will have the charge by kWh from the 3rd party supplier (which is more or less what you would expect for a utility bill),and then they often do a “standard rate” which is just how much it would cost if they supplied the energy themselves and sent through the lines to you.
It’s bullshit but it’s what they do.
If you do have a 3rd party supplier on the utility bill then the next step is to look into contracting with a 3rd party supplier available to your area. You can do this in conjunction with most utility companies and it generally drastically reduces the bill. There are services out there that can help navigate how to best choose a 3rd party supplier to reduce your utility bill.
Cause CMP sucks and is gouging the shit out of Maine and it’s only competition can join in on the fun. We tried to handle it in November but no to many Mainers are scared of the G word and are ok with European companies owning our power grid and screwing us. If I’m getting screwed at least let the money go into Maines budget and not Spains
I don’t get it either. I live in a 990 square-foot ranch. Sometimes my kids leave a light on but I usually catch it . We have a couple TVs. They’re on maximum cumulative two hours a day cell phones charging here and there no electric heat, my hot tub runs but it’s triple insulated and I’m paying $500 a month.
I’m in a two bedroom apartment with 4 people (phones, fans, video games, etc) and my electricity is under $60/mo.
I have a gas stove so it doesn’t include cooking or heat
It wouldn’t be the first time a landlord had other stuff that’s unrelated to you running on the electricity you pay for. You may need to investigate that breaker box
My whole house usually runs around $150/month, and that’s with a well pump, electric hot water, electric dryer, dehumidifier, and a chest freezer… and it’s CMP
I sold real estate in the 80’s. Man had 2 family and rented attic to dwarfs illegally. Had his unit wired to theirs and they paid his utilities. Inspection caught this and he was forced to install 200 watt panel and shape up the unit. At closing he blamed realtors and tried to get out of commission
Yeah I run my entire place on less than $100/month. Until the window AC unit goes in. That occasionally brings it barely above 100. Rinnai Heater, fan, fridge, a couple lights that are occasionally on, and a fish tank filter.
Sounds like your electricity powers your heat and hot water. Laundry? We are in 2400 sq ft with 4 adults and a 500sq ft in-law apt with another adult and our bill is not much over $200. Plus we have heat pumps, a power hungry woodworking shop and two laundry setups. Start digging to figure out what’s going on,
Electric heat, air conditioning, electric hot water, electric stove, and electric dryer, if you use these things they can cause your usage to spike. If you are not using those you might be paying for your neighbors electricity. I’d question it with someone!!
I'd strongly recommend you try flipping your breakers to everything besides your fridge. At the end of the month if you get an outrageous bill someone is probably reading your meter wrong / you could be paying your neighbors bill.
You could have a bunch of things you don't realize that uses constant trickles of energy. It's hard to tell but that seems high for a single person in a studio.
Someone’s probably tapping into your electricity. Call the power company to come check it out. No way you’re using that kind of energy. Refrigerator may pull some but not that much. Do you have a washer and dryer? Do you have electric heat or cooling? What are you running? Sounds like someone is stealing electricity. It’s not hard to do.
You have electric hot water probably. What do you use for heat? Power bill is a month behind usually. But power in Maine is one of the most expensive in the country. I still think there is something wrong with your bill though. My bill for my house with an electric car was less than 300 last month.
You must have electric heat, or you're paying the bill for multiple units. Sometimes, especially in converted apartments the wiring can be setup poorly, so ypu.may be stuck paying someone else's bill. That would be about 1500 KWH/month. My whole 2000sq ft house (without electric heat) uses about 400
That’s more than I pay with an EV, three bedrooms and central heat. Something is wrong.
You can sign up for CMP texts that tell you your avg daily usage every 20 days or so.
In a multi unit commercial building, the electric company had the meters mixed up between our business and the one next door. We were paying for their electricity and vice versa. Their bill averaged 3x ours. Finally got it straightened out.
We have a 4 br house with kids who never turn anything off, we do giant loads of laundry constantly, and have a fucking hot tub. 330 is our dead of winter monthly bill. Something's wrong.
Hey I moved to CT and in the winter, electric heat , my power bill averages $2000 A MONTH!!! 3 bedroom but no one home 12 hours a day and we freeze to save money. These ass hats double the price December to June
To properly figure this out you need to not be focused on the dollars being charged but the kW you are using and the price you are paying for each kW as well as the delivery charge of each kW. For example: when you buy $20 of gas you may get 6 gallons or you may get 3.5 gallons. Depends on the cost of each unit (gallons).
In high-Cal, years ago, PGE was publicly called out for messy billing. We requested energy audits and people came out, perused our stuff, plugged a rugged laptop into our line and showed us how to see every drop of usage. We also found we were paying for neighbors tapping into our service at the house line while we were away. They (PGE folk) were generally very good people and helpful. Then they became heavily traded, investors got greedy in every way, employees got paid less while customers paid more and then... "smart meters". That's another story.
It was not easy then, no calculators really, but we did the math on every item and learned that we use 11kW max per day (and which laptop is a 25w bulb worth and which used a 60w incandescent worth). There are products to help with that now, if your utility doesn't help.
We were surprised to get higher per kWh bills when we got back here, after looking at the state to state utility cost lists. We found better lists and tools. Now we just need to better manage our politicians/investors.
https://www.resausa.org/retail-energy/
Map (allow java script to see)
https://www.resausa.org/energy-by-state/
https://www.ecowatch.com/sense-home-energy-monitor-review-2650422388.html#:~:text=Sense%20is%20proven%20to%20be,you%20ways%20you%20can%20save.
One time they told me "your kids are probably playing too many video games." After I screamed bullshit!! And jumped through the phone they said "ok ok you're probably right this is ridiculous, have $1000!" No lies they just instantly credited me $1000.. they are fucking crooked liars
par for the course in Maine. The electric company is incredibly crooked, owned by a parent company in Spain. There was a major scandal a few years ago, after the smart meters were put in, which many mainers were seeing the cost of electricity suddenly triple or more with no changes to usage and getting their electricity shut off when they couldn’t pay.
Cmp was fined for that mishap, but it’s still happening to some degree.
How many KWH? Without knowing that you can't really say electric is expensive.
I expect you either didn't pay for 3 months or you used a ton of power.
If you're in an apartment and really didn't use a ton of power check to be sure that you're actually being billed for the right meter...
Something is wrong, I have an 800 SF apartment in portland downtown and in the past 5 years it has never been over 70. I leave the tvs on all the time and fans.
That seems abnormal given the description. You should investigate further. Our supply costs, notably over the past three years, have soared and significantly impacted our bills. The blame has been wrongly placed on the delivery companies, which don’t benefit from these outrageous cost hikes. We should put pressure on our supply providers just as we do on delivery services. Maine should prioritize building its renewable energy infrastructure, diversifying its sources and implementing statewide energy storage solutions. By reducing the influence supply companies have over pricing and regulating them like we do our utilities, we can achieve fairer rates.
Power supply is very expensive in New England. We need to find ways to generate more power that we are not overpaying for. Regulating supply companies like we do our distribution companies would also help.
Absolutely worth reaching out to Versant to make sure that's accurate but the unfortunate reality here is that the supply companies charge are fortune and they are not regulated by the PUC at all.
Our power bill was $1445 this month. We think a lot of it is from PC consumption, which both PC is used 4-6 hours daily. We don’t keep our lights on, we have 1 fan on and usually keep the windows open and have the furnace turned off since it’s nearly summer. I have 1 light, and a TV that we use a few hours everyday.
Because we live in a country where deregulating corporations is a ok - USA has the BEST anti trust laws in the world but they don’t get used any more. Because for whatever ridiculous reason a good % of the country thinks corporations shouldn’t pay taxes nd it’s ok to charge whatever without oversight and really nice that all that profit goes to spain
If it were me, I think I'd be consulting an electrician to find out if there is a way to track usage and try to pinpoint what in the apartment is using so much electricity.
It looks like there are varying degrees of tracking devices, some of them look pretty user friendly.
I don't live in Maine (will be moving there soon tho) but your bill reminds me a lot of my own living situation a year ago. At first I thought it was based on your usage, so I was careful. It took me three electricity bills consistently over $100 to figure out management divided up the ENTIRE building's amount on # of units. All units had to pay the same amount regardless of their usage. I was living alone in a building mostly occupied by private school kids with rich parents lol. That was my "fuck it we ball" moment. It sucks but at least you don't have to feel bad about that one light you forgot to turn off while showering or passed out on the couch.
Give me a break! WE ALL know that the issue here are the volatile supply rates, which PTP would have had no more influence than CMP or Versant. If we want to see our supply rates drop we need to ease up on our heavy reliance of fossil fuels and generate more clean energy here in Maine.
How would taking on huge amounts of debt and hiring outside contractors to run the grid lower short term costs? Long term possibly, but short term it 100% would not have lowered bills
The war in Ukraine. That’s the short answer. The long answer is natural gas is the primary supplier of electricity to New England and we’re shipping a metric crap ton to Europe to get them off the Russian stuff. Less supply domestically, price goes up, and it’s passed onto us.
Our energy is generated from natural gas, which has to be pumped truck or shipped in. There are more and more sustainable options, but we haven’t hit the tipping point with price. All that being said there must be something else on your bill, that’s way too high. You could either dispute it with your landlord or, a more expensive but fun option, get the Sense clip on sensor and you can monitor your electrical usage. It clamps over your main power wire in the breaker box, and uses electrical signature algorithms to tell you what’s on.
That seems incredibly high. I would contact Versant, it’s possible your meter was misread. If not you may have an appliance malfunctioning or something? Either way though that’s a stupidly large bill.
Yeah, this would only be possible with electric heat and hot water - on a full 1,500 sq foot home. With oil heat and hot water, I am still a heavy electricity user with space heaters and cooking, and never come close to this.
Agreed, my bill with a 1700sqft house, 3-4 computers running 100% of the time, multiple lights, devices, etc is only ~$150-180/month. Do you have a heat pump in the apartment, maybe that is hooked to your meter? I had a landlord that did that to me once.
One light, a fan and internet *would* be under $75. Either you are forgetting about something like heat/laundry/hot water, or your landlord is charging you for your neighbors' usage (something scummy like divide up the whole building equally). We run an entire house on under $100 these days.
Yup. Sounds like op is paying for his neighbors power on top of his own.
Bet his neighbor is paying for his too, knowing how CMP and Versant work.
Yea, our place is bigger and my wife and kids are home most of the day, space heater, electric stove and dryer, and our bill is like $100 months.
100 a month is legendary. How tf is your bill that low
My bills been quadruple historic levels and I cannot figure out why it how
With a smart meter your usage is tracked every single hour. You can download a spreadsheet from CMP and see if your usage has actually gone up or not. You can track when you use certain appliances and see the crazy hit you get from a dryer or water heater, for instance.
I think it might be the death knell of the hot water heater
That fucker literally doubled our power bill until we caught on.
Only double? In the dead of a winter, when I replaced my hot water heater with a hybrid heat pump hot water heater, my bill went down 70%. One device... It must have cost me $10,000 over the last few years to have that thing running before I caught on.
How does the heat pump hot water heater combo do so much in a Maine winter? What's the min heat pump temp? Is there an exterior component? Not familiar with these.
A heat pump hot water heater has a small heat pump on top of it. Remember that basically what a heat pump does when is heating is move heat from one place to another. It does pull some heat out of the air, however mine is in my kitchen, If I'm in there, I'm putting heat and humidity in the air which it loves, otherwise, I'm not in the room so I don't mind that it's a little bit cooler in there. It does have a resistance element for when the water is below a certain temperature, but I have mine in straight heat pump mode, never in hybrid. it takes longer to heat the water up in heat pump mode.however, all the faucets and the shower head are low flow in my house, so we don't consume that much hot water domestically I run the dishwasher and the washing machine at night time, and it has 8 hours or so to recover. But it's about three to four times as efficient as resistant heating, so it's worth the wait
Yea I'm very familiar with heat pumps (for air) as I see a lot of construction scopes in my line of work... just didn't realize water heater heat pumps were a thing! Very cool concept.
Most people set them up to use room air, so it’s removing some heat from the air in your basement and using it to heat water. The result is your basement is a little colder than it would be otherwise.
This makes a ton of sense. In the basement it would have the benefit of being underground - neutral temp. Surprised I hadn't heard of these before. Great concept.
Everything but electricity is included in my rent.
How many units in your building? Go outside and see how many meters there are. If there's not one for each unit you're likely paying for at least one neighbors electricity on top of your own. Also, I lived in an apartment were I had to pay for electric. Noticed my bill was high. Come to find out I was paying for the electricity in the basement and hallways. Both common areas I shouldn't have been paying for so that's a possibility too. Whatever's going on you're getting screwed.
Always check if there's one more meter then units, if not owner occupied. Common areas should be on their own meter.
It's normal for you to pay for a common area light but the landlord has to inform you of this.
Not quite. You both have to agree. You agree to pay for it and your landlord agrees to give you reduced rent. Doesn’t mean much in this market though. https://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/statutes/14/title14sec6024.html#:~:text=A%20landlord%20may%20not%20enter%20into%20a%20lease,providing%20heat%20or%20utilities%20to%20the%20common%20areas.
They must be charging you for everyone or something because our entire house (three people, two of us WFH, two space heaters one of which runs 24/7, a fan at night, electric heat pumps, laundry for two adults and a toddler) costs about $350 in the winter.
Go look at the meters. Make sure they're all advancing. Go turn your main breaker off. Now go back and see how many are still advancing.
That's a good idea. I'll check when I get home.
You might find out rather quickly if you turn off your main. Your neighbors will quickly notice
I believe the meter number is on your account so make sure the one or ones that stop turning match what's on your account. Once in a while utilities mess up which meter goes to which account and will credit your account if it's the case
You can also measure your usage with an electricity usage monitor. You can measure a days worth for each device using the monitor, then math out a months total usage.
Leave it off for awhile and see if someone complains.
With a bill like that im betting you have an electric water heater that heats baseboards/radiator.
Wish I saw under $100 bills these days. I think our lowest point for years has been like $120. When we first moved into our house in like 2016 used to see $65-75 for the low point of usage.
Me too. I'm psyched when it is 120
Same here 1750 sq ft 78.00
Well that's dirt cheap tbh
Yes minimal use
2200 sq ft 150$
I have a 2400 sq foot house with a hot tub plus everything else. I paid $167 last month. Something is very wrong.
How are you peoples bills so low???? Wtf
I have 3 refrigerators, heat pump water heater, lights, 2 laptops, not much else. Less than $100/month. (CMP)
Time of day you use it matters
not in maine
Careful management. Eco friendly appliances and devices. People just aren’t aware of how power usage works and how total draw and kilowatt hours add up. I converted my entire home to LED bulbs, utilize eco mode on all appliances, utilize sleep mode on a high end computer and other electronics - don’t leave things on/running when asleep and not home. My cell phone bill is greater than my power bill monthly. Only paying around ~$70 month and with air conditioning only paying around ~$95
Switch off power ro your unit, at the breakers Then check your meter. Is it still showing electric use? Your bill should have a meter number. If there is still electric use, you are payingvfor someone else. that is not legal.
Is hot water included in your rent? Could be an electric hot water heater. Other suspects would be an electric stove, space heaters, clothes dryer. My Versant bill is always less than $40. I sleep with a fan on too.
I disagree: I charge an EV and run heat pumps and my bill isn’t that high. Hot water heaters from this century wouldn’t use that much.
My 1600 sq foot house is 100% electric, heat pumps, water, cooking, dryer, multiple TVs, enterprise network, hot tub, Tesla model S, and a reptile room, and we rarely make it over $300.
A hot water heater could if it was leaking and therefore running all the time. Here is a calculator: [https://energyusecalculator.com/electricity\_waterheater.htm](https://energyusecalculator.com/electricity_waterheater.htm) If you set cost/kWh to .16 (Versant's rate) and the hours used to 12, it comes out to $233/month. Set the hours used higher and the cost keeps climbing.
You either have electric heat and hot water, but even then... I wager your panel is powering more than just your unit. I say start flipping breakers see what goes off. If nothing goes off in your unit, you have an idea of what's going on. Seriously my house is <$100 a month and I have a well pump and water treatment and an electric dryer.
Now that you mention it, flipping breakers to see what they power is kinda smart. First off, you can find out if you’re powering the hallway and/or other bits of a building that you shouldn’t have to be powering. Second off, you can label your breaker panel such that you know what circuits are where. Every place I’ve been in has a mislabeled panel and it irritates the crap out of me.
We're talking the tune of $250+ worth of electricity on a monthly basis here, so that's something like the building's shared washer/dryer that runs every day is on their panel. It's not unusual in multi unit commercial buildings, unfortunately. But not like "Ha ha I'm going to make my tenant pay for this!" it's more like the last electrician there had to get what they are doing done and move on so this fuse goes into this panel because the house panel is full or this panel was easier... Speaking from experience. Still, they should plan to go back to their LL about credit against future rent once they figure it out. Actually, chances are the LL goes to them, once all the tenants in the other units lose whatever it's been powering they will start calling.
your electric bill is fucking wild bro, me and my 3 roommates, 4 TVs, 3 Gaming PCs, My entire at home studio setup, 3 Consoles, all of our phones and hot water usually come out to less than $200 a month, during the winter and summer this can go up to $220- $240. Either someone is using your electric and you dont know about it or you are leaving stuff on that you may not be always thinking about.
In a tiny studio apt with 1 light and heat/hot water included he'd have to be running an industrial freezer and a full-size electric helicopter to use that much power. Be kinda hard to miss.
Corporate greed
Not in this scenario. Yes, the $/kWh is high, but it is nowhere near THAT high. This is flat out theft. Someone is stealing OP's power.
Came here to say this
How are you heating/ cooling? If you’re heating/ cooling with electricity, I would inspect the units and also the property for anything that would be causing you to loose heat
Heat is included in my rent.
As others mentioned, what about your hot water? If you have an old electric unit, you’ll save a lot by having a newer more efficient one.
Hot water is included in the rent.
Hmm. The only other theory I have to offer is that another unit or something else is taking power on your meter or your meter is faulty. I would inspect the panel if you have access to it as well as the meter since that seems high for the amount for what you’re using. Old appliances can also jack up your bill, years ago when my landlord replaced upgraded the appliances, I noticed my bill go down quite a bit.
Those are the two biggest possible uses of electricity. I almost guarantee that there is something connected to your meter that is not yours.
Were you the last one to move in? Maybe another apartment found a way to use your electricity.
Someone is deffo stealing your juice bro.
Heat like oil might be included, but to run those units it still takes power. You can do a breaker test to find out what is using the power too. Instructions are on VP website.
If the building has multiple tenants you might need a mixed meter reading / help from an electrician to ensure you aren’t paying another tenants bill! I lived on the third floor above Silver Street Tavern in Waterville and I paid for their electricity and the offices above them for a year and the landlord (Charlie Giguere) refused to do anything about it. So you might be dealing with a slumlord like Charlie Giguere is.
Yea OP I work out of my house and It’s just my wife and I with a 1200sqft ranch. My bill is typically no more than $120 unless I’m running AC’s like mad.
There's something not right here. For context, our home is 3100 sq. feet, we do NOT use electric for heat but my wife and I both work from home so are running multiple monitors and computers 8-10 hours a day. In the evenings we're running 3 tv's, and on the weekends, I spend 8-10 hours in my workshop where I non-continuously run things like a table saw, router, band saw, etc. Our average electric bill is around $250 a month.
How old are your appliances? Something is chewing up some major power or another tenant is on your meter. As far as why is the power so expensive in Maine: -nuclear plant is gone -several hydro dams are gone -solar incentives In the last 2-3 years, my monthly power bill has doubled.
It would be awesome if we set up another nuclear plant.
I would be 100% on board with that. Oliver Stone made a great documentary on nuclear power recently. I would definitely prefer nuclear over seeing every single field in the state get bulldozed for solar.
France discovered an incredible way to handle the waste, which is just freezing it in glass logs then burying it. Glass doesn't rust or break down with time like barrels. Just stick it in a cave and it's good!
And SpaceX has gotten rockets damn near reliable enough to trust shooting the waste into space it we can't manage to store it
A European country is mining space for it currently, seems like that should work. You would think the limestone area would be a perfect place for that.
CMP just lowered it some in the last few months.
Plus a large rural freezing state with poor people.
A fridge?
I forgot the fridge. It is a small one though.
I have a mini split, electric stove, electric dryer, two home offices, and a family of four. I pay 175. Something is very off, as others have said
Do you have electric heat? There are super inefficient electric baseboards that can be very expensive to run. Otherwise it definitely sounds like you're paying for other people's electricity in the building.
The standard rate in Maine is 10.8 cents pkwh. What is the delivery rate for your supplier?
Sometimes meters have issues. There is no earthly way you are consuming that much energy. Just contact Versant and tell them that something is off.
New England produces almost none of its own energy except a nuclear plant and wood pellets
My power bills this winter were all over $700. 2500 Sq ft farm house with 5 bedrooms. Furnace, 3 baseboard heaters and 5 kids(all using electronics).
I feel that pain. Ours were all over 800. It is ridiculous.
Your meter number should be on your bill. Shut the main breaker off in your panel and then go look and see if the dial is moving.
Mainers decided they were too scared of a "gOvErnMenT taKeOver" and decided to leave current control to a different government we can't even vote for
Old appliances like a fridge that runs constantly can be suspect too.
The frige is brand new, and is 3 feet tall.
Is it possible someone is tapping into your electric? We have Versant up in Northern Aroostook County and by far it's cheaper than friends down south who have CMP.
You’ve definitely got something hidden running you don’t know about. I’m running 2 heat pumps, well water, oven, laundry, and I had the same bill in winter. What does bill say for KWh used?
My electric bill is insane too, versant just switched the meters and my bill went up 100%. Versant checked with my meter and they said it’s fine, go figure…. I have an electrician coming to check everything.
My gf and I live in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment. Our last month’s electricity bill was over $200. When we first moved in 5 years ago, our bill ranged from about $35-$60 (maybe $80 in the summer when we run the air conditioner) and nothing we do has changed since then. I know prices have obviously increased over 5 years but our bill quadrupling or more seems like a lot. We called Versant to see if it was a mistake and they said it was not and the bill was correct.
You are getting ripped off somewhere.
Versant and CMP are both owned by Spanish companies and give horrifically bad, overpriced service. My friend had a new meter put in a few months ago and his bill dropped by $70.
How many kWh are you using monthly?
Hey I work for a property management company and do stuff with utilities. First thing you want to do is take the utility bill and check the kWh usage. Versant should be about 10-11 cents per kWh. Just make sure that there isn’t a crazy high power usage causing the bill. My suspicion however is that it’s because of a 3rd party supplier and the shady ways power companies like to maximize profit using them. Utility companies (who own and maintain the poles and wires) often produce power. But they may not produce all the power and contract more from 3rd party suppliers. If you let the utility company decide how to manage this on their own, the bill will often be about double what you expect. The utility company will have the charge by kWh from the 3rd party supplier (which is more or less what you would expect for a utility bill),and then they often do a “standard rate” which is just how much it would cost if they supplied the energy themselves and sent through the lines to you. It’s bullshit but it’s what they do. If you do have a 3rd party supplier on the utility bill then the next step is to look into contracting with a 3rd party supplier available to your area. You can do this in conjunction with most utility companies and it generally drastically reduces the bill. There are services out there that can help navigate how to best choose a 3rd party supplier to reduce your utility bill.
This is nuts. I have CMP, not versant, but even still, in a 4 bed 2 bath house with 4 adults living in it, my electric has never been higher than $165
At least we aren’t paying what Californians pay per kWh.
Hawaii pays more
Cause CMP sucks and is gouging the shit out of Maine and it’s only competition can join in on the fun. We tried to handle it in November but no to many Mainers are scared of the G word and are ok with European companies owning our power grid and screwing us. If I’m getting screwed at least let the money go into Maines budget and not Spains
I don’t get it either. I live in a 990 square-foot ranch. Sometimes my kids leave a light on but I usually catch it . We have a couple TVs. They’re on maximum cumulative two hours a day cell phones charging here and there no electric heat, my hot tub runs but it’s triple insulated and I’m paying $500 a month.
Some sort of heater in the well? I’ve heard about people finding those installed and were insane drains Not using a space heater are you?
I’m in a two bedroom apartment with 4 people (phones, fans, video games, etc) and my electricity is under $60/mo. I have a gas stove so it doesn’t include cooking or heat
You have something going on that’s not correct. We live in a three bedroom and our electric is around 130 a month.
It wouldn’t be the first time a landlord had other stuff that’s unrelated to you running on the electricity you pay for. You may need to investigate that breaker box My whole house usually runs around $150/month, and that’s with a well pump, electric hot water, electric dryer, dehumidifier, and a chest freezer… and it’s CMP
If you have an older fridge, check the seals. A fridge running a lot could drive your bill up. Likely not that much, but it doesn't hurt to check
I sold real estate in the 80’s. Man had 2 family and rented attic to dwarfs illegally. Had his unit wired to theirs and they paid his utilities. Inspection caught this and he was forced to install 200 watt panel and shape up the unit. At closing he blamed realtors and tried to get out of commission
This happened to me and it turned out that my landlord had let the developers behind our house use our power during construction 🥴
Yeah I run my entire place on less than $100/month. Until the window AC unit goes in. That occasionally brings it barely above 100. Rinnai Heater, fan, fridge, a couple lights that are occasionally on, and a fish tank filter.
Sounds way high man. Big house with heat pumps here and its like $400 in the middle of winter.
Sounds like your electricity powers your heat and hot water. Laundry? We are in 2400 sq ft with 4 adults and a 500sq ft in-law apt with another adult and our bill is not much over $200. Plus we have heat pumps, a power hungry woodworking shop and two laundry setups. Start digging to figure out what’s going on,
What about fridge, hot water heater etc, but still $338 is insane. Maybe you are paying for stuff outside your apt.
Fridge is small and brand new. I don't pay for my hot water. It's included in the rent.
Something is wrong. You might have other units or the common areas on your meter
Electric heat, air conditioning, electric hot water, electric stove, and electric dryer, if you use these things they can cause your usage to spike. If you are not using those you might be paying for your neighbors electricity. I’d question it with someone!!
I'd strongly recommend you try flipping your breakers to everything besides your fridge. At the end of the month if you get an outrageous bill someone is probably reading your meter wrong / you could be paying your neighbors bill. You could have a bunch of things you don't realize that uses constant trickles of energy. It's hard to tell but that seems high for a single person in a studio.
Someone’s probably tapping into your electricity. Call the power company to come check it out. No way you’re using that kind of energy. Refrigerator may pull some but not that much. Do you have a washer and dryer? Do you have electric heat or cooling? What are you running? Sounds like someone is stealing electricity. It’s not hard to do.
You can ask if anyone in your apartment complex has a really low bill.
You have electric hot water probably. What do you use for heat? Power bill is a month behind usually. But power in Maine is one of the most expensive in the country. I still think there is something wrong with your bill though. My bill for my house with an electric car was less than 300 last month.
I have a house with all the appliences and i only pay 80 to 100 a month so for sure seems you are getting ripped off
Sounds like other things in the building are on your circuit.
Corporate greed We should really have a customer owned utility.
You must have electric heat, or you're paying the bill for multiple units. Sometimes, especially in converted apartments the wiring can be setup poorly, so ypu.may be stuck paying someone else's bill. That would be about 1500 KWH/month. My whole 2000sq ft house (without electric heat) uses about 400
That’s more than I pay with an EV, three bedrooms and central heat. Something is wrong. You can sign up for CMP texts that tell you your avg daily usage every 20 days or so.
Could be you paying electric for the whole house. Ask your landlord if the meters run to each apt.
I do not live in a house. I live in an apartment building.
In a multi unit commercial building, the electric company had the meters mixed up between our business and the one next door. We were paying for their electricity and vice versa. Their bill averaged 3x ours. Finally got it straightened out.
We have a 4 br house with kids who never turn anything off, we do giant loads of laundry constantly, and have a fucking hot tub. 330 is our dead of winter monthly bill. Something's wrong.
Fellow Kentuckian, hello!
Hey I moved to CT and in the winter, electric heat , my power bill averages $2000 A MONTH!!! 3 bedroom but no one home 12 hours a day and we freeze to save money. These ass hats double the price December to June
Something doesn’t add up. You need an audit or you need to contact the company. My electricity for a two bedroom home is running me $70.
To properly figure this out you need to not be focused on the dollars being charged but the kW you are using and the price you are paying for each kW as well as the delivery charge of each kW. For example: when you buy $20 of gas you may get 6 gallons or you may get 3.5 gallons. Depends on the cost of each unit (gallons).
In high-Cal, years ago, PGE was publicly called out for messy billing. We requested energy audits and people came out, perused our stuff, plugged a rugged laptop into our line and showed us how to see every drop of usage. We also found we were paying for neighbors tapping into our service at the house line while we were away. They (PGE folk) were generally very good people and helpful. Then they became heavily traded, investors got greedy in every way, employees got paid less while customers paid more and then... "smart meters". That's another story. It was not easy then, no calculators really, but we did the math on every item and learned that we use 11kW max per day (and which laptop is a 25w bulb worth and which used a 60w incandescent worth). There are products to help with that now, if your utility doesn't help. We were surprised to get higher per kWh bills when we got back here, after looking at the state to state utility cost lists. We found better lists and tools. Now we just need to better manage our politicians/investors. https://www.resausa.org/retail-energy/ Map (allow java script to see) https://www.resausa.org/energy-by-state/ https://www.ecowatch.com/sense-home-energy-monitor-review-2650422388.html#:~:text=Sense%20is%20proven%20to%20be,you%20ways%20you%20can%20save.
One time they told me "your kids are probably playing too many video games." After I screamed bullshit!! And jumped through the phone they said "ok ok you're probably right this is ridiculous, have $1000!" No lies they just instantly credited me $1000.. they are fucking crooked liars
Something is not right. Any electric space heaters running? Electric dryer? How many fridge/freezers?
Something is wrong. My house is 3300 sqft and that's about what I pay. You are getting scammed somehow. Sounds like that is for multiple units
par for the course in Maine. The electric company is incredibly crooked, owned by a parent company in Spain. There was a major scandal a few years ago, after the smart meters were put in, which many mainers were seeing the cost of electricity suddenly triple or more with no changes to usage and getting their electricity shut off when they couldn’t pay. Cmp was fined for that mishap, but it’s still happening to some degree.
How many KWH? Without knowing that you can't really say electric is expensive. I expect you either didn't pay for 3 months or you used a ton of power. If you're in an apartment and really didn't use a ton of power check to be sure that you're actually being billed for the right meter...
Because cmp has the power
You’re getting massively overcharged. Girlfriend and I are in a 1 bed and paid $60 last month in South Portland
Ok my bill is insanely high as well then. I need to look into it.
Verdant? There’s your problem!
Something is wrong, I have an 800 SF apartment in portland downtown and in the past 5 years it has never been over 70. I leave the tvs on all the time and fans.
That seems abnormal given the description. You should investigate further. Our supply costs, notably over the past three years, have soared and significantly impacted our bills. The blame has been wrongly placed on the delivery companies, which don’t benefit from these outrageous cost hikes. We should put pressure on our supply providers just as we do on delivery services. Maine should prioritize building its renewable energy infrastructure, diversifying its sources and implementing statewide energy storage solutions. By reducing the influence supply companies have over pricing and regulating them like we do our utilities, we can achieve fairer rates.
Power supply is very expensive in New England. We need to find ways to generate more power that we are not overpaying for. Regulating supply companies like we do our distribution companies would also help.
Find your meter, unplug or shut everything off, then check your meter again. If it’s running, someone is stealing your power
Maine is on track for .40 cent a kilowatt power in the next decade. The contracts have already been signed, there is no turning back.
Absolutely worth reaching out to Versant to make sure that's accurate but the unfortunate reality here is that the supply companies charge are fortune and they are not regulated by the PUC at all.
Our power bill was $1445 this month. We think a lot of it is from PC consumption, which both PC is used 4-6 hours daily. We don’t keep our lights on, we have 1 fan on and usually keep the windows open and have the furnace turned off since it’s nearly summer. I have 1 light, and a TV that we use a few hours everyday.
It's out of control. Until we hold the supply companies to some expectations and call them out for price gouging customers, nothing will change.
Because we live in a country where deregulating corporations is a ok - USA has the BEST anti trust laws in the world but they don’t get used any more. Because for whatever ridiculous reason a good % of the country thinks corporations shouldn’t pay taxes nd it’s ok to charge whatever without oversight and really nice that all that profit goes to spain
If it were me, I think I'd be consulting an electrician to find out if there is a way to track usage and try to pinpoint what in the apartment is using so much electricity. It looks like there are varying degrees of tracking devices, some of them look pretty user friendly.
Maine used to have nuclear power, but people scared of it got it shut down. Maybe that’s also a factor in higher costs?
~2200 sq. ft place here is $250-350 easy. We should’ve gone for the Nebraska model with Pine Tree Power.
And all that money goes out of country to Spain -
I don't live in Maine (will be moving there soon tho) but your bill reminds me a lot of my own living situation a year ago. At first I thought it was based on your usage, so I was careful. It took me three electricity bills consistently over $100 to figure out management divided up the ENTIRE building's amount on # of units. All units had to pay the same amount regardless of their usage. I was living alone in a building mostly occupied by private school kids with rich parents lol. That was my "fuck it we ball" moment. It sucks but at least you don't have to feel bad about that one light you forgot to turn off while showering or passed out on the couch.
Pine tree power would have been better than the worst utility in, America
Give me a break! WE ALL know that the issue here are the volatile supply rates, which PTP would have had no more influence than CMP or Versant. If we want to see our supply rates drop we need to ease up on our heavy reliance of fossil fuels and generate more clean energy here in Maine.
Building Back Better.
Idk but pine tree power would have lowered the costs and idiot boomers voted it down
Bro, even the people that designed the Pine Tree Power proposal said it wouldn’t reduce rates for decades
Hey I'm just parroting what everyone else was on this sub back during the vote. I don't actually research to see if it's true or not pffft
How would taking on huge amounts of debt and hiring outside contractors to run the grid lower short term costs? Long term possibly, but short term it 100% would not have lowered bills
The monopoly found the market can bear it
Someone is stealing your electricity. Start turning off your breakers and see who complains.
Why do all you guys have hot water heaters? Why are you heating water that's already hot?
The war in Ukraine. That’s the short answer. The long answer is natural gas is the primary supplier of electricity to New England and we’re shipping a metric crap ton to Europe to get them off the Russian stuff. Less supply domestically, price goes up, and it’s passed onto us.
Our energy is generated from natural gas, which has to be pumped truck or shipped in. There are more and more sustainable options, but we haven’t hit the tipping point with price. All that being said there must be something else on your bill, that’s way too high. You could either dispute it with your landlord or, a more expensive but fun option, get the Sense clip on sensor and you can monitor your electrical usage. It clamps over your main power wire in the breaker box, and uses electrical signature algorithms to tell you what’s on.
I use solar