The second example in the article shows someone using 5000 kWh in January of this year alone — how does one household reasonably use that amount of electricity? In The Netherlands and Germany the average is around 3500 kWh per household _per year_.
I apparently use a little over 7000 kWh per year. So while 5000 kWh per month does sound high, 3500 kWh per year sounds almost as inexplicable on the low side.
Maybe people in the Netherlands and Germany don't have A/C, as people in the US from NY to Texas do, but I'm not sure that's a plausible explanation.
My power consumption isn't that much lower when the A/C is off; while the year-round average is about 600 kWh per month, it's typically over 500 kWh in the colder part of the year.
Another data point is that our power company (which is a UK company by the way) sends a periodic comparison of energy usage with similar homes, and mine is supposedly a little higher than peers but not that much.
I felt like something must be wrong, in fact, when I first moved in, and tried to figure out what was drawing all the power when the A/C is off. I didn't come to any conclusion except that maybe the furnace has a blower fan that draws a lot of power.
I have the opposite of a plan that passes through the spot price, by the way - my payment plan attempts to equalize the seasonal variations and charge the same amount each month for the whole year.
As for using that much in one month and it being January (cold snap was in February, no?), I don’t know. Housing that’s not properly insulated and running a bunch of space heaters 24/7 instead of putting on warmer clothes and using central heating. Or Bitcoin mining.
Edit: Never mind. Since it lists him as a contractor, it’s possible he uses a bunch of power tools out of his place (might not even be his personal home but a business).
House construction in the Netherlands and Germany are likely far different. Both places are much cooler than Texas on average. From what I've glanced at, average summer high temperatures in the Netherlands and Germany are around 25C. In Texas, it's around 35C.
In Texas, with its long and oppressive summers, houses are constructed to be cooler inside than it is outside. This is great during the summer. Not so great when it hits -17C outside.
So to get their house warm, Texans are literally fighting against what their houses are engineered to do.
Also, energy efficiency and weatherization isn't well-regulated in Texas. So you have old, inefficient houses that are designed to stay cold.
Summer design elements use air flows that can be blocked off for winter, or things like awnings that don't block the lower winter sun.
So it's more that many houses aren't particularly well insulated or sealed in the US, which costs energy in summer too. Plenty of new houses are built with a tight envelope and require active ventilation for air exchange. Most older houses are not like that.
I don't use anywhere near 5000 kWh of electric in a year, but I have several months of high natural gas use for heat, where making the building 2x as efficient would save a few hundred dollars a year (which I'm implying is not a huge incentive; this event in Texas certainly has me planning to reevaluate for easy improvements).
As far as the high usage in the article, one reasonable explanation would be an electric vehicle (but it's not clear that is the case either).
To put it in perspective. In the last month my household of 5 in NL used about 400 kWh of electricity and 400 m3 of gas. Those 400 m3 calculate to about 5 MWh (!) of electrical energy (Dutch gas is about 35 MJ per m3ans my heater is 95% efficient if used optimally). Since I expect Texans to mostly have electrical HVAC mostly for cooling ... My house is very inefficient in comparison.
US: 49% gas, 34% electrical [1] NL: 90%+ gas [2]
[1] https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-and-cool/home-heatin...
[2] https://www.milieucentraal.nl/energie-besparen/aardgasvrij-w...
So ... I don't think Texan climate can account for such a large difference in electricity consumption if the houses were equally well isolated? Presumably the cooling in the summer is the bigger problem & wasteful?
(Yes, I don't really know... that's why I only pointed out that gas isn't involved without making further claims ;D)
In the northeastern US where I live, it gets down below 0 C for a good portion of the winter and usually once or twice to around -18 C.
While certainly there are apartments, maybe houses, with electric heat and heat pumps, my experience has been that electric heat is expensive and undesirable and a heat pump is a useless gimmick that doesn't work in actual cold weather (although maybe a newer system would be better). It seems like the cheaper apartments in terms of rent have electric heat, which is more expensive.
I think natural gas (I use around 140 therms at peak in the winter, which I think is about equivalent to 400 m^3) is typical if you live reasonably close to the city/inner suburbs, and if you don't have gas, you may well burn fuel oil, which is essentially diesel fuel that's delivered in trucks and stored in tanks. In some parts of the US, where coal is produced, I think people use that for heating, but it's less common overall because it isn't cost effective to ship a long way.
Last month I used about 500 kWh which is higher than you but not hugely.
I wonder if your climate is as cold as where I live though, or if you are using as much gas for a significantly more temperate region.