We had much higher than average power usage up until a few months ago, when we started taking a closer look at our PGE bills. With the changes we made, we cut our electricity usage about 60% (which causes a much bigger drop in our bills, since the electricity costs are tiered) You end up paying almost 3x per additional KWH over the base price if you are using 200% or more of expected usage. The steps we made were: Installed a Nest so we could track how much the HVAC was activating (and control it much easier). Review/change sleep or power off settings on all computers. Installed a timer switch to control our master bathroom ventilation fan. We weren't using our living room much, so we just unplug the power strip that activates the Xbox, DVR, TV, etc unless we are actively using it. We also went around to every outlet we could reach and used a Belkin Conserve units (like Killawatts, but a much better form factor allowing you to have the display be a few feet away from the outlets) to view energy usage at our outlets. If you have a smart meter, you can login to the PGE website and see a per-hour breakdown of power usage. The data typically lags by 2-4 days for us, but it is great being able to see such detail.