JACKSONVILLE, Fla — Temperatures may be on the rise Wednesday, but after a week of very cold weather, electric bills across Northeast Florida may be rising too.
JEA says that happens because cranking up your heat more than a few degrees at a time causes the type of electricity you're using to change. Instead of fuel efficient heat pumps, a sudden thermostat increase activates your system's "heat strips."
These heating coils are similar to the heating elements found in a toaster, and they consume huge amounts of electricity, according to JEA spokesperson Simone Garvey-Ewan.
She says the company sees a usage surge especially on cold mornings like the ones across Northeast Florida last week.
"A lot of customers wake up and what they do is they immediately bump up that thermostat, right?" Garvey-Ewan said. "So what we typically suggest is when you adjust your thermostat, you do it one to two degrees at a time. No more than that, because when you adjust it more than two degrees at a time, what happens is the heat strips come on."
The problem with that, Garvey-Ewan said, is that heat strips use about three times more electricity than your home's heat pump typically does.
Thermostats indicate when they are using heat strips with a red warning light, or the words "emergency heat" or "auxiliary heat," according to JEA.