In Kentucky we are on a similar plan. I pay $194 a month and will settle up in July. Right now I am about $360 to the bad. My electric bill in December was $369 and in January $459. I have new efficient heat pumps but the cold had them running a lot. My mother-in-law had one heat pump down and the other running at 65 and got a $600 bill for January!
When I bought the house 20 yrs ago in similar winters I might have hit $250-$275 in actual usage. Kentucky Utilities is always before the Utilities Public Screw’em Commission getting another price increase. There are months when we use substantially less KWH and still have higher bills than the last month.
The utility used to “come read the meter” monthly and my bill averaged $285 a month. Then one month a new reader suddenly said they were afraid of dogs even though the previous reader would love to see our dogs and pet and play with them as he was reading the meter and I got a guesstimate which was really high, so I joined their self meter read program and after two readings my balanced budget monthly payment dropped from $285 to $165 wonder what was happening here and in July the last two years I have had $30 and $50 settle up bills.
Now they have put up Smart Meters, this will also end badly for the consumer I’m sure.
Yeah, we have the danged Public Service Commission criminals down here that keep allowing these raises. I heard yesterday that they may be back for more.