In January, our electric bill shows 1685 kWh. In February, 1259 kWh.
The bill shows usage back a year, it does seem as if heating season consumes a lot more power than the rest of the year, in spite of our central AC.
Heat is oil-fired hot water, has 5 zones, one of which is just pushing water to heat the hot-water tank next to the furnace. Could there be a problem with a pump?
Almost none of the lighting is incandescent, it's a mixture of CF and LED. Ovens in kitchen are electric. I don't run a woodshop, or a printing press, or and other electric machinery of note. And I don't bake that much.
How could I go about learning something about what's consuming power? We probably used more of the heating system in January (it was cold, and we were home with an injured member of the household) — but still, even 'usual' level seems high.
Best Answer
What I did was contact my electricity supply and said "send me one of those energy monitor thingies free pronto"
Some months later it arrived.
I clipped the wireless current sensor around the main line/hot between meter and main-panel (consumer unit), inserted some batteries into the wireless transmitter and I was then able to see on the receiver/display unit how the power changed as I turned various things on and off.
This particular unit display current usage and lets you look at averages for prior days/weeks/months but if you actually want to spend your own hard-earned money, you can buy energy monitors you can plug into a PC and do data logging, graphing etc.