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I am a snow bird from North US and go to warm weather in Winter. I winterize my house in the North with only Oil Furnace, and a Fridge on. No other appliance is kept on. For most winters my electric usage ( and the bill) was quite low. This winter however every month it was 3X the normal. I called the Electric Utility. They suggested may be one of the 2 appliances was using a lot of electricity.

Is it possible for a fridge to use 3X more electricity? If yes how do I confirm that? Is there a Test device that will tell how many KWH the appliances are consuming?

DEEM
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Whenever I see a 3x jump in a power bill for an unoccupied house, my first suspicion is that someone is tapping into your house for free (to them) power because they know you are not home. I had a neighbor in Seattle who did this; went to Alaska every summer to mine gold, spent the winters in Seattle working on fishing vessel repair. One summer an RV parked in his driveway while he was gone and I met the owner, who said he was a relative. The relative left at the end of August and when my neighbor returned in September, he saw the huge power bill. He asked me if I had seen anything, I told him about his "relative", it was phony. From that point on he gave me his contact information in Alaska...

JRaef
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