We see the same thing when there is a particularly cold month
even with forced air heat from the furnace blower. December is
hard to tell due to added Christmas light load. The newer
furnaces claim to have lower power requirements on the blower.
My present furnace (15 years old now) is better on electricity,
however, I believe it's partly because the blower has higher
CFMs compared to the old one, so it probably runs a bit less.

BTW, doesn't the power factor actually decrease the measured
watt-hours? That's why the power company adds capacitors to
correct the power factor so they don't loose money on low
readings. It's been a long time since I studied these things,
so I may be totally wrong here.

William W. Plummer wrote:
We had a very cold winter here in New England and my heating system was
running much of the time. So gas bills have been high, but my electric bill
went up, also. I suspect the circulator pump motor might be the reason.
The label on it says 1.7 amps so that is close to 200 watts or 0.2 kwh/hr or
144 kwh per month. Actually, add some because the power factor is not 1.0
but take away some because it was not running continuously. Anyway, that's
about the increase I saw.

Are there more efficient circulator motor/pumps available these days?
Recommendations?