If you receive a bill that is higher than normal, the first thing to look for is how many days of service were in the billing period. Calculate your daily kWh usage for the current month by dividing the kWh usage by the number of days in the billing period, and compare it to your average daily usage over the past several months.
If it’s significantly different, stop to think if you have added a major appliance or altered your lifestyle in some way that would account for the change. Also, compare the meter reading on your bill to the reading on the meter.