Why Is My Electric Bill So High?

The most common reason a California household is paying too much on their electricity bill has nothing to do with what appliances they own. It’s that they’re on the wrong rate plan for how they actually use electricity, and they’ve never changed it.

I’ve analyzed over a thousand PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E billing records. In roughly 60% of cases, the customer was enrolled in a default plan that cost them $20–$150/month more than the best available alternative. That’s the first thing to check. After that, you start looking at hardware.

1. Wrong Rate Plan

Most California customers are auto-enrolled in whatever default plan their utility assigned when they signed up. That plan is not optimized for your usage pattern. It’s simply the default. The utilities offer multiple plans with very different pricing structures, and the difference between the worst and best fit can be enormous.

• PG&E E-1 Tiered vs. EV2-A (for a household with an EV or battery): can differ by $100–$200/month
• SCE Schedule D vs. TOU-D-PRIME: $600–$1,400/year difference is common for EV owners
• SDG&E Schedule DR vs. TOU-DR1: the right choice depends heavily on whether your usage peaks in the 4–9pm window

The fix is to simulate your actual usage against every available plan. Your utility’s website has a comparison tool, but it uses averages. For a real calculation, you need your interval data. The best rate plan finder shows which plan is cheapest for a household like yours, and the US electricity rate database lists the exact per-kWh prices and peak hours for each one.

2. An Appliance Running Constantly

Single appliances can silently run up a bill. The worst offenders, in rough order of how often I see them in high-bill households:

• Old garage chest freezer: can use 150–200+ kWh/month on its own, especially if it’s from the 1990s
• Electric water heater with a failed element or thermostat: runs continuously trying to hit temperature, adds 200–400 kWh/month
• Refrigerator with a bad door seal: compressor runs 80–100% of the time instead of 30–40%
• Pool pump set to run 8–12 hours/day: unnecessary outside of summer; 6–8 hours is enough for most pools
• Space heater left on in a secondary room: 1,500W × 8 hours is 12 kWh/day, $130/month at SDG&E rates

A $20 smart plug with energy monitoring (Kasa EP25) will tell you exactly how much any individual device draws over 24 hours. Start with the garage, then the water heater. The appliance running-cost calculator estimates what each device costs per month on your specific rate.

3. HVAC Working Harder Than It Should

Heating and cooling account for 40–60% of a typical California home’s electricity. When the system is degraded, that percentage climbs.

The cheap fix almost nobody does: change the air filter. A clogged filter makes the blower motor work significantly harder for the same airflow. A $10 filter changed every 60–90 days is the highest-ROI single action in home energy efficiency. I’ve seen it reduce HVAC runtime by 15-20% on its own.

Beyond that, duct leaks are a major driver in older California homes. Up to 30% of conditioned air can escape into attics and crawlspaces. Signs: rooms that are always harder to cool/heat, longer runtime to reach setpoints.

4. Phantom Loads

Devices in standby collectively draw more than people expect. A living room with a TV, game console, cable box, and receiver can draw 40-80W continuously, not when in use but in standby. Over a month that’s 30–60 kWh, or $10–$30 depending on your rate.

The list of high-standby devices:

• Game consoles (Xbox, PlayStation): 5–15W in standby
• Cable/satellite boxes: 15–25W even when “off”
• Old desktop computers not fully shut down: 10–20W
• Older TVs: 2–10W in standby

Smart power strips cut standby power to secondary devices when the main device (TV, PC) is actually off. A $25 strip on your entertainment center is a three-month payback investment.

5. You’re Consistently in Tier 2 on a Tiered Plan

If you’re on PG&E E-1 or SCE Schedule D, you pay more per kWh once you exceed the monthly baseline allowance. The Tier 2 rate is roughly 40–50% higher than Tier 1.

The insidious thing about tiered pricing: your marginal cost is highest exactly when you’re trying hardest to use electricity: hot summer months, EV charging, guests visiting. If you’re consistently in Tier 2, every kWh you reduce saves you at the expensive rate.

It’s also worth asking whether a TOU plan would be cheaper for your pattern. Tiered plans look simple but can be expensive for high-usage households. TOU plans look complicated but can be dramatically cheaper if most of your usage is off-peak — check your plan’s exact windows in the California peak hours tool.

6. Rate Increases You Haven’t Tracked

California utilities raised rates significantly in early 2026. PG&E’s residential rates are up roughly 25% from 2023. SDG&E has raised rates every year for the past several years. If you’re comparing your bill to “what it used to be” without accounting for rate changes, the math is going to be confusing.

Pull your usage (kWh consumed) from your utility’s account portal and compare it to the same month last year. If your kWh is flat but your bill is higher, that’s a rate increase, not a usage problem.

7. Unauthorized Use

Rare, but it happens. Meter mis-assignments occur (a neighboring unit’s circuit connected to your meter). Shared-garage EV charging on someone else’s circuit also comes up. If you’ve genuinely checked everything else and still can’t account for the usage, request a meter accuracy test from your utility. They’re required to do it at no charge in California.

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The most efficient path to diagnosis is to look at your 15-minute interval data, which shows exactly when the extra electricity was used. That usually makes the culprit obvious without any guesswork.