I've had two energy audits and both pointed to our attic as being extremely inefficient. The insulation was old and on the floor of the attic while our HVAC trunk was above that and there was no insulation at the roof. Both energy audits said we should see about a 30-40% reduction in electricity bills if we fixed our attic insulation.
We met with a bunch of vendors - cellulose, fiberglass, and finally went with the commercial blown spray foam insulation that basically capped the roof. They even spent two days removing all of the old insulation on the floor of the attic so as to keep the attic and the house the same temperature and thus cause the hvac to be more efficient. 2800 square foot ranch on a slab that was built in parts so lots of trusses going in different directions so they could only send small guys to do it and it took about a week to finish. 13.7k in insulation and labor. This was in September.
All of our lights are LED and we have a supplemental wood stove that we use from wood we harvest on our property. We have no natural gas available so our heat is a heat pump and baseboards which we have not turned on this year yet. We live in the midatlantic so our temps at night have been in the 30s and our daytime temps in the 50s.
I just logged into my online electricity account and it's telling me we used the same amount of electricity as we did last year - 1805 kWh from end of October to now in November.
How is that possible? What am I doing wrong? What am I missing? To say I am tearing my hair out over this is an understatement as we made this a huge priority and spent a fortune trying to get our monthly spending down in this category and it doesn't seem to have made a difference.
Help!
What in the green earth gods, do you have a bitcoin farm going? Do you have a kid that is running some gaming computer 16 hours a day? (edit, just joking on bitcoin farming, but still...)
In my 2300 sq ft home with natural gas and a furnace, we used 240 kWh last month. Our heat turned on because of our zone, but since that is gas not heat pump at most we are paying a little more for the forced air fan running. Our base electric load is 160 kWh in the summer (we do not have AC). Seriously, what in your house is generating 1800 kWh in a month with no electric baseboard heating or AC!?!?! Our range/stove is gas, but we rarely use that during the summer (grill, salads, hummus).
Seriously, something seems amiss with 1800 kWh without heat. It seems that with heat in the coldest part of winter you could easily reach 4-6k MWh a month. Is that right?
If your electricity use is not tied to heat then you are targeting the wrong problem here with the insulation. Something else is going on in your house. I would find out what that is before worrying about the insulation.
edit: I usually won't suggest smart home devices but you might consider the Sense smart home device in this case.
https://sense.com/ It is one stop for figuring out what is on in your house at all times. You might learn what the energy hog is.