Time to check for low household voltage. Motor failure chances grow with lowered voltage. If not that and it is just not a Christmas season type bill the defrost timer on the refrigerator may be jammed. What other type of 110 volt things have issues?

Any clues about the reason for the higher electrical bill would be related to your average previous bills. Low supply voltage also increases electrical draw..

There are several possibilities of why that blower fan motor may have expired besides wear and tear. Including the flakey temperature switch not allowing it to get a clean start when on the start windings. Or staying on the start windings too long.

If it is not one thing it is usually something else pretty frequently in my experience with life.. Including tax the kilowatt hour cost just accelerated another 3.5 cents here last month. now it is at about .15 cents per kilowatt. Highest rate in Canada I suspect. Furnace oil is better than 5.00 a gallon and natural gas has had 3-5 price increases this winter.

We heat 2000 square feet with an add on wood furnace. Costs about 800.00 a year. We reside three miles out of town so property taxes are about 1K a year instead of 5-7K for a similar house in town. That to me is the predominate reason there are so many unsold houses in town. The newer municipal town tax rates will alone drive prices lower in my opinion. To add to the peoples mysery is the water is metered in town and I think there is also a sewer charge separately. To me it is almost like being reduced to renting your own house currently there.

Replaced the television with a 60 inch smart Samsung this Christmas. It runs so cool that the savings in electrical draw will probably pay for it several times over its lifespan in comparison to the old set. Running your hand along the top after several hours running it still feels to be at ambient temperatures. There is only one warm spot about halfway down the back and it is only warm and small. The cost of living keeps rising and we compensate in many ways. This is an old habit of ours from a time that it was necessity. Sometimes it enables commercial items like the under counter led lighting that took sometime to finalise. I would turn it into a commercial thing except there is our ages to consider and the need for the money is not there. So I will probably sell the ideals as package as I have done before with other things. One thing always leads to another.

I better get out of here and get that heat exchanger installation completed that I am working on now.