[sirKJV]

Hi all - apparently this is a hot topic as I see there is a recent post for a residential space.

We are unfortunately the first tenants of a commercial space in a mixed residential/commercial building complex. I say unfortunately because there is no previous electric bill to look at.

We are about 6 months into the lease now, and the electric bill keeps climbing. It started at around $600 in August, and we figured it was just because of the AC running. Now we're in February and we are getting hit with bills that are close to $1,000. We are a 1,100 square foot space! We talked to our neighbors who are about 600-800 square feet and they are paying $200-300 per month tops. We are not open Tuesday, Friday or Sunday, we have the heat down to 50 now on days we are closed, and we only go up to 68 on the days we are open. We have LED lights, a mini fridge and a water heater in the ceiling. Yes our heat is electric, but we have been seriously limiting our use and we have no other appliances or anything in our space.

We had an electrician come out to confirm our box is hooked up properly and nothing fishy is coming in or going out of it. We also confirmed our space is hooked up to the meter by shutting off the switch above the meter, but we can't rule out that no other space is connected. We had Eversource come out and confirm the meter is working properly. The landlord, maintenance guy, Eversource, and our electrician all agree our electric bill is astronomically high, but no one wants to take responsibility or tell us what else we can do.

I'm trying to get our electrician to install monitoring hardware on our fuse box right now. We are also considering draining and shutting off the hot water heater completely as we only have a sink and a toilet and don't really need it. We are also considering taking off the meter box in the meter room and seeing if another space's wires are connected to ours. Does anyone have ANY other suggestions or has come across this before? Is the most likely scenario that another space is connected to our meter? Thank you for any help or suggestions!

 

[joed]

You could try turning off breakers to any circuits you don't need on the days off.
Take meter reading every morning and see if there is a drastic difference on the day you have breakers off. Maybe there are even some breakers you don't need on when you are there. Leave them off. Maybe they feed a neighbour?

 

[Bud9051]

Ask the neighbors what rate they are paying, it can vary There is also a demand charge that is based upon your peak bill. Not sure how it works but one high bill and the next 12 have an extra charge just in case you need it.

Identify all equipment you are running and estimate the load and hours of use. What you don't know, guess or ask here. Purpose is to create a list of all power being used and see if it is anywhere near your bills.

What is your heat source?
What is used to heat your hot water.

Tell us more about your business.

Bud

 

[roughneck]

Do you have straight electric heat or a heat pump?

 

[Missouri Bound]

Any chance your power company installed a new meter since you have been there?
Have you had them out to check this out?
I have seen meters with the wrong power factor installed which doubled the rate.
Get the power company involved. It sounds like you are doing everything right so far.

 

[AllanJ]

Flip off the water heater breaker but don't drain it yet.

Flip off most of the breakers when you go home for the evenng.

Read the meter before you go home and then again the next morning.

i

 

[Old Thomas]

Check to see if outside lights are on your service. Maybe you power parking lot lights.
See if you have a demand charge. If you do, post it. There are ways to deal with it.

 

[Let it Snow]

Is this Electric heat with a Heat Pump?

 

[Let it Snow]

No response from the OP yet.
Turning the heat down more than a few degrees on a Heat Pump and turning it back up, will cause it to turn on the Emergency Heat ON (furnace coils) when the Thermostat is turned back up. The Thermostat should NOT be turned up more than a few degrees at a time.
The Emergency Heat kicks ON because the Furnace needs to bring the temperature back up quickly. Heat Pumps have an indoor and outdoor Thermometer and will turn On whatever it needs to for temperature adjustments.
Emergency Heat would use about four times more electricity, maybe more.

 

[Let it Snow]

The second consideration is the Rate of Demand charged by the Power Company.
A Third consideration is a Power Factor charged by the Power Company.
These two items can total more than the Usage charge.
I'm not going to waist time explaining them unless the OP responds.

 

[Missouri Bound]

Another possibility is that since the building was vacant all of the previous bills were estimated. Now that a tenant is there they want to ensure a proper billing cycle.
I would like to know the history of the bills before the tenant arrived.
Someone must have been paying something.

 

[Oso954]

We are not open Tuesday, Friday or Sunday, we have the heat down to 50 now on days we are closed, and we only go up to 68 on the days we are open.

Assuming your neighbors have the same type electric heat, I’d talk to them about what temps they use for heating and setback.

Letting the temp drop too much, and then having to bring it up can cost you money. It may be either as an electric cost or a demand charge. Or, a combination of both of them.

The other question is where is this building ? In a cold climate I could understand how heating the space in winter could cost you more than AC does in summer. Especially if the the heat is electric resistance heating.

If your electric heat is heat pump heating, I wouldn’t be using any Setback.

 

[wthdideyedo]

I would almost start shutting off circuit breakers myself and see if anyone complains about their power. Not sure how many people, who, or the type of residential, but this might be you shutting off someone's oxygen concentrator while they are sleeping (the owner would probably know that). At the very least, I would make an effort to notify everyone in the complex of the problem, and give them notice of a time you are going to shut it down. Then wait around for a brief window to see if anyone comes clean about getting free electricity (also the problem with this.. will they? )

You could also take your readings at specific times. Twenty four hours, when you are open, twenty four hours when you are closed and all on, 24 hours when you are closed and everything off that you can. Perhaps you could then start flipping half the breakers to narrow it down to which ones are having the draw. Then narrow it down again with 1/4 of the breakers, or the other half. Keep dividing it down until you find the problem circuit, if you don't get individual readers for them.

If you have a big discrepancy on the breakers over a specific time, you could then get your watt usage per hour, perhaps doing this over a smaller window 8-12 hours for when other businesses are open vs closed. If you had your usage per hour, it might help narrow it down to a certain appliance (even if its not yours). I would also keep track of the temperature and whether or not this is on the weekend. A day that's 10 degrees different from the other test day gives you the same answer its probably not the heat. If its a consistent number its probably something that's steady-on like lights.

I would also see if the owner can tell you about any changes that were made to the complex. If you are the first new commercial in this complex, did they do any remodeling? Did they reroute any electrical, change any walls? If so my first guess is they added an outlet to the other side of one of your walls. Got an ice cream store next to ya? See if they can tell you what your space was used for before. That might help track it down to what they just tied into your space.

 

[sirKJV]

Hey everyone I am sorry to not have responded earlier, and I appreciate all of the replies. I actually did some simple Google searching and figured out that our space was aimed to rent to a dry cleaner with the previous owners of the development and it never panned out. Personally this leads me back to the transformer, and my thought is that they installed one that is totally unnecessary for our space and use. I have attached a picture. Can anyone comment on this or think of anything else with this information?

FYI the current owner is an investor that bought the development form the builder who ran out of money. They are likely going to claim ignorance but I want to prove they knew about this. We are the first tenant in our space and it took them two months just to get the electrical in our name so this hit us as a surprise after we opened the business and got it running. We have been shutting off all circuits and while the bill went down a little it is still $600+ every month. We are going to start shutting off the transformer now to test it.

 

[roughneck]

What does this transformer feed?

 

[Kevin_Essiambre]

What does this transformer feed?

Its 480 to 208, so it probably feeds the panel for their space.
@sirKJV that transformer may be a little or a lot oversized. This should be about 125 amps at 120/208 volts per phase. Now, I've seen offices with 15 to 30 kva (and sometimes bigger), but it would all depend on your load as to what size would be needed. In this case, this transformer will handle quite a bit before needing to upgrade. IMHO, this transformer isn't oversized *that* much. This is probably the size I would install if I didn't know what the tenant would be using it for.

That being said, I cannot comment on how much this would affect your power bill... someone else might be able to though.

Sent from my new phone. Autocorrect may have changed stuff.

 

[Old Thomas]

Does your electric bill have a demand charge and how much is it? If it does and it is high, I can explain how it works.

 

[AllanJ]

If the transformer is fed by your meter (after your meter) then no one else (no other space) may share that transformer Any other usage would subject the landlord to the entire electric bill.

If the transformer is before your meter then it should not affect your power usage or bill.

 

[sirKJV]

From my understanding the line comes in from outside and feeds into a box. This box has switches for "main" and "transformer." This box then connects to the transformer, and the transformer feeds another box which has all of the other fuses for the space. We had an electrician come in and check on everything and they said they could not see anything coming in or going out to other spaces besides ours. They did mention the transformer might just be a bad transformer, but given we're the first tenants I'm wondering if it's a good transformer but just not appropriate for our 1,100 square foot space.

Again I'm about 75% or more sure that our main box feeds into our meter, so the transformer and all other fuses are going into the meter. It's in a separate meter room and I have no idea how we'd even begin to try and trace it back. The one thing we don't know is if anything else besides our main box is tied into our meter, but again I'm really starting to believe the transformer is the issue and not the possibility of something else being tied in.

What are the questions I need to be asking a certified electrician? Is there a specific type of electrician I need to hire? Someone with commercial space experience or experience installing transformers?

I suppose I can share demand charges, bill info, etc, but I've already stated the space directly next to ours has the same utility company and pays less than half of what we do so I really don't think it has anything to do with our bill or how we're being charged. We also had the electric company come out to ensure meter is working properly and we've reviewed our bill many times with them and an electrician. Everyone agrees we're using way too much electricity, but no one is offering a solution.

 

[seharper]

Turning the heat down more than a few degrees on a Heat Pump and turning it back up, will cause it to turn on the Emergency Heat ON (furnace coils) when the Thermostat is turned back up. The Thermostat should NOT be turned up more than a few degrees at a time. The Emergency Heat kicks ON because the Furnace needs to bring the temperature back up quickly. Heat Pumps have an indoor and outdoor Thermometer and will turn On whatever it needs to for temperature adjustments.
Emergency Heat would use about four times more electricity, maybe more.

I'd call that a defective thermostat. Emergency heat has one single purpose: To provide heat when it's too cold for the heat pump to function at all! Whether to use emergency heat merely to speed up a thermostat change, is a costing decision to be made by the homeowner. It's not the thermostat's decision to do that!

A thermostat which does that is either cheap, improperly wired, improperly configured, or the owner has willfully decided "Yeah, I do wanna do that". (and maybe did not think about or understand the consequences of that decision).

If your thermostat does that, have your heat pump outfit come out and make it not do that.

There is also such a thing as "auxiliary heat" which *is* intended to be used as a quick-heat-up-booster. Some people accidentally cross-wire their emergency heat onto the auxiliary heat lines.

Yes, these are hard concepts/distinctions.

Letting the temp drop too much, and then having to bring it up can cost you money. It may be either as an electric cost or a demand charge.

Generally the best strategy is always to let the temperature fall and only run heat when about to occupy the space. A lot of people believe "keeping it at temp takes less energy than climbing back to temp and that's balderdash. Self-justifying claptrap, or as Mark Twain calls it, "What you know... that just ain't so!"

However, you may be onto something with demand pricing / time-of-day pricing. If the 'turn it back up' causes a surge either during peak times or causes an hourly KW spike causing a peak charge, that can have a big effect on bills depending on the billing plan.

But we have to presume that OP has already carefully investigated and has full understanding of the rate plan, and has precluded that. Right OP?

Especially if the the heat is electric resistance heating.

Electric resistance heating, *alone*, would explain OP's bill. HVAC takes stupid amounts of energy when you do it the hard way!

Personally this leads me back to the transformer, and my thought is that they installed one that is totally unnecessary for our space and use. I have attached a picture. Can anyone comment on this or think of anything else with this information?

Nah, that's little. To give you an idea, my local electric company won't even call you back if you have a small cottage and want less than 24 KVA service. (240V/100A) Many towns/utilities will require you to provision 48 KVA service (240V/200A) for any new home or remodel that involves service changes. I've heard about people putting in ADUs (in-law apartments) and the city requiring 96 KVA service (48 KVA each, for an in-law!)

So if the dry cleaner was using gas *for absolutely everything it's possible to use gas for*, then I'd consider that transformer to be "worryingly light" and it would be a rather small laundromat. I'd want to see 1-2 KVA provisioned for each washer and each dryer. So you can see where 38 KVA won't take em far.
I would expect that transformer to run auxiliary loads.

We are the first tenant in our space and it took them two months just to get the electrical in our name so this hit us as a surprise after we opened the business and got it running. We have been shutting off all circuits and while the bill went down a little it is still $600+ every month. We are going to start shutting off the transformer now to test it.

Yeah, you need to shut off ALL circuits. ALL. With everything shut off, the bill should be $0. (or the minimum connection charge). I suspect you may find your bill is not $0 when it should be.

In fact, the moment seasons allow, I would shut off all heating and A/C for a solid month and see what that does to the bill. I think electric resistive heat alone is enough to explain your bill.

From my understanding the line comes in from outside and feeds into a box. This box has switches for "main" and "transformer." This box then connects to the transformer, and the transformer feeds another box which has all of the other fuses for the space.

That's a normal setup. But again, where is the rest of the service for the laundromat?

Also, maybe it's time to start posting photos of the panels. They're called "service panels" or "load centers", calling them a "box" makes it sound like you haven't done very much research and then people start wanting to educate you on power 101 lol. Hopefully you're farther along than that!

We had an electrician come in and check on everything and they said they could not see anything coming in or going out to other spaces besides ours. They did mention the transformer might just be a bad transformer, but given we're the first tenants I'm wondering if it's a good transformer but just not appropriate for our 1,100 square foot space.

Well if you built a 1,100 foot house, they'd probably want 48 KVA, so I wouldn't call it a large transformer.

If the transformer is "bad" in the way of wasting electricity, it will be making heat. All wasted electricity turns into heat, at about 3 BTU/hr per watt. If it's wasting as much power as you think, you could cook eggs on it.

Again I'm about 75% or more sure that our main box feeds into our meter, so the transformer and all other fuses are going into the meter. It's in a separate meter room and I have no idea how we'd even begin to try and trace it back. The one thing we don't know is if anything else besides our main box is tied into our meter, but again I'm really starting to believe the transformer is the issue and not the possibility of something else being tied in.

Easy. Turn your main off. Your meter must STOP and stay stopped. If it doesn't, something shady is going on.

What are the questions I need to be asking a certified electrician? Is there a specific type of electrician I need to hire? Someone with commercial space experience or experience installing transformers?

Rather than thrashing around in every direction at once, I would focus on experimenting with where the energy is going. Do the "main off" test and see if it stops the meter. Do the "transformer off" test and see if the same happens.

You can shut off branch circuit breakers one at a time and also test if the meter stops or notably changes speed. You haven't really precluded anything so far. You can keep spamming professionals at the problem... if money is no object... but part of the problem is the format: The professional shows up, does stuff, and leaves: That is how the format works. The professional doesn't hang around day-in day-out for months to do extended testing and monitoring. You can.

Obviously you can't if you don't have any skill/education, but there's an easy answer for that: keep writing checks, just kidding, skill up

You could also look into something like a Sense home energy meter, where it clamps CTs onto each of your circuits.