Your SVEC or FPL bill climbed while your habits stayed put: reading it the way a Live Oak technician does

Line one: kilowatt-hours, not dollars

Pull this month’s bill and the same month from last year. Ignore the dollar total for a minute; rates change and fuel charges move. Find the kilowatt-hours used. If the kWh figure is close to last year’s and only the dollars went up, the utility changed its pricing and the air conditioner is innocent. If the kWh jumped by a quarter or more with the same weather and the same household, keep reading.

Line two: the weather

Was it hotter? Live Oak’s July highs are the hottest in north Florida, and a stretch of 96-degree afternoons instead of 92 pushes a healthy system to run noticeably longer. SVEC and FPL both publish average temperatures or degree days on the bill or online; a ten percent increase on a hotter month is weather. A forty percent increase on a similar month is a fault.

Line three: the rest of the house

A new well pump that runs constantly because of a leak, a pool pump left on a bad timer, a second refrigerator in the barn, a hot water heater with a failed element. Rule them out before blaming the air conditioner. If the bill jumped in a month when the air conditioner barely ran, March or November, it is almost certainly not the air conditioner.

The HVAC suspects, in the order we check them

1. Heat strips running in summer. A stuck sequencer or a thermostat wiring fault can leave the electric backup heat energized while the system cools, so the compressor spends its summer cancelling out a space heater. Nothing feels wrong inside. The bill can double. A clamp meter on the strip circuit is where our visit begins, and the fault is more common in older heat pumps than anyone expects.
2. Leaking ducts. A belly duct torn under a manufactured home near McAlpin or attic flex hanging loose in a River Woods two-story sends cooled air you paid for into the crawlspace or attic. The system runs far longer to make it up.
3. Low refrigerant. A slow leak drops capacity, so the system runs long hours to do the same job. It eventually freezes the coil or kills the compressor; the bill is the early warning.
4. A dirty outdoor coil or clogged filter. Pollen, pine straw and grass clippings make the compressor work harder for every degree. Cheap to fix, expensive to ignore.
5. A failing compressor or capacitor. Drawing more current than its nameplate every hour it runs.
6. The system is simply old and inefficient. A 10 SEER unit from the 1990s uses far more electricity than a current 15.2 SEER2 heat pump for the same cooling. This is a replacement conversation, and we have it with the kWh numbers in hand rather than a sales pitch.

How a high-bill visit runs in Live Oak

We bring the bills into it. Current readings on the compressor, blower and strips are compared against nameplate; the strips are checked for unwanted operation; the ducts are tested for leakage; the charge is checked; the coil and filter are inspected. You get a written list of what is burning the extra kilowatt-hours and what each fix costs. If the answer is “the system is old and the house needs a new one,” you also get the efficiency comparison and the FPL instant-credit eligibility for in-town customers, paid through the utility’s participating contractors, with Cook’s enrollment status to confirm [[CONFIRM WITH JERRY]]. The federal 25C credit expired with the 2025 tax year, and this page won’t claim it survives.

Call about a high bill

What the fix usually costs you, in plain terms

A stuck heat strip relay is a small part and the bill drops the next month. Duct sealing is a half-day of labor that pays back over a summer or two. A refrigerant leak repair depends entirely on where the leak is. A new system is the largest outlay and the only one that also improves comfort, and it is the one that can go on a monthly plan, with the terms in writing before you sign.

Keeping the bill honest

Keep last summer’s bills. Change the filter after pollen season. Have the strips, charge and ducts checked every spring. Put a surge protector on the disconnect before the next lightning season. And if a bill ever jumps with no change in the house, read the kWh line first and call second.