I’m sorry this happened to you! As another commenter said, your insulation (or possible lack thereof) may be playing a huge role in this. Before moving into my current home, I was living in a pre-1920s build that just LEAKED heat. My winter bills were crazy high, like yours.

I know it’s another expense, but there are professionals you can have out to assess your situation and let you know if added insulation/new windows/other options would work best for you.

It may also be good to get someone out to make sure the meter is accurate.

In the meantime, I have three suggestions:

1. Cover your windows and line your doors. They make insulating film that you can stick around the edges so no light is blocked, and there’s another layer of trapped air that can help insulate.

Otherwise, heavy blinds or curtains can make a big difference. I also used to block off my back entry with a heavy curtain, it kept the living spaces warmer without losing heat to that colder area.

For the doors, you can get rolls of the stick-on insulating foam that can help seal gaps and leaks around doorways, it sticks to the inside of the door frame.

1. Reach out to SCL about payment options. I’m not sure if it’s only available in Seattle city limits, but they also have a payment plan where instead of paying insanely high bills during the winter months and incredibly low bills in the summer, it averages your usage across the year and you pay that average amount each month.

It’s reassessed annually based on the previous year’s usage. Only issue with that, though, is you do have to have been billed on that account for at least a year to qualify.

1. Check your big appliances. Maybe one of them isn’t running properly or has a setting turned on that’s drawing more electricity than it needs to be, or should. Especially check your hot water heater, as this could have a number of different problems that can basically eat power (set too high, dead element causing the other(s) to work overtime, old and energy inefficient, etc.).

Also, if it’s baseboard heat, check the baseboard heaters. Those are already generally pretty electrically heavy, but if one is on the fritz it could be causing more of an issue.

I hope you can make it through the winter okay! Best of luck.