At this point, it feels like a shared human experience to open your energy bill and have your jaw drop. It hurts. All of us. You haven’t changed anything in your home, but your monthly costs keep climbing. Why?
Your energy bill is higher than you can ever remember because Puget Sound Energy entered the second year of an approved two-year rate plan in January 2026. Under that plan, a typical homeowner using 800 kilowatt-hours each month saw an estimated increase of $7.67 per month, or 6.3%, during 2026. That followed an estimated 12% increase in 2025.
A typical residential natural gas customer using 64 therms per month saw an estimated $1.65 monthly increase, or 1.9%, in 2026. That came after an estimated 9.4% increase in 2025.
PSE’s rates include more than the energy used inside your home. Bills also reflect the cost of delivering energy, maintaining infrastructure, buying or producing power, and operating the utility system.
It’s also important to understand that two things can be happening at once:
You can’t control utility rates, but you can find and reduce the waste inside your home.
Think of a home energy audit as a head-to-toe health checkup for your house. We don’t know the exact reason why your bills are so high, but we’ll help you find out!
Our team looks through your home to find where air is getting out or sneaking in. By the end of the day, you’ll have a clear map of your home’s energy leaks and a real plan to fix them. We’ll look at your:
Air leaks, damaged insulation, restricted airflow, and leaking ducts are already costing a lot of homeowners money every single month. Higher utility rates make these existing problems even more expensive.
For example, a home that wastes heated air through an attic or crawl space must purchase more energy to maintain the same indoor temperature. When the price of that energy rises, the financial impact of the leak rises with it. Every leak's impact becomes exponential!
An energy audit doesn’t have the ability to lower PSE’s rates, of course. But, it can show you where your home may be using more electricity or natural gas than it needs to.
If you add up all the air leaks coming from tiny cracks around your windows, doors, pipes, and electrical vents, it’s like leaving a window wide open all winter or summer long!
During our audit, we’ll pay attention to the most common trouble areas:
Once you find these sneaky spots and seal the gaps, you’ll see how your energy bills come down.
If your attic doesn’t have good insulation, your heated air can get out through your roof. During our energy audit, we climb into every dark, cramped space to check:
Think of your air ducts as the highways that carry conditioned air to your rooms, so what would happen if those highways had giant cracks and holes?
You’ll end up losing air and energy through your crawl space or your attic. At NW Energy, we know that the average home loses up to 30% of its heated air through leaky ducts. That’s literally throwing money away. We’ll make sure to find:
One of the first things we’ll need to do is checking your furnace, heat pump, or mini-split system. We often find that simple maintenance issues are the root cause of high electricity bills, so we’ll first take a look at the filters and the overall cleanliness:
Your home needs an energy audit ASAP if you ever see any of these signs:
Puget Sound Energy filed a new three-year rate proposal with Washington regulators in February 2026. As currently requested, the plan would raise overall electric rates by 15.2% in 2027, 3.7% in 2028, and 8.7% in 2029. Requested natural gas increases are 14.2% in 2027, 3.2% in 2028, and 3.6% in 2029.
Those future increases are proposals, not approved rates. The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission must review the request, and the final increases may be lower, higher, delayed, or rejected.
Still, the filing makes one thing clear. Energy affordability is and will continue to be an important issue for you and me. Improving your home’s efficiency now can help reduce how much energy you need, regardless of what future rates become.
Let the local experts at NW Energy Conservation find the exact spots where your home’s losing energy and stop guessing why your monthly bills are so high.
Reach out to us for a complimentary Home Energy Audit. We’ll come to your home in the Greater Tacoma, Seattle, or Puyallup area and conduct a full inspection for free. The free consultation is limited to homeowners within our service area, so give us a call, text, or submit a form to see if you qualify.
Reach out to NW Energy Conservation today and schedule a service call!
Yes. Under an approved two-year rate plan, a typical homeowner using 800 kWh per month was expected to pay about $7.67 more per month in 2026, an increase of approximately 6.3%. This followed an estimated 12% increase in 2025.
A home energy audit cannot change the utility’s rates. It can identify air leaks, poor insulation, duct problems, and HVAC issues that cause your home to consume more energy than necessary. Fixing those problems may reduce usage and soften the effect of higher rates.
For most homes in the Puget Sound area, the biggest reasons are a lack of attic insulation and leaky air ducts. These two issues let your expensive heat out, forcing your heat pump to work twice as hard.
A standard home energy audit takes about 1 to 2 hours. It depends on your house size and how easy it is to get into your attic and crawl space.
Yes! Sealing drafts around doors, windows, and pipe gaps can cut your heating bills by 5% to 15%. It’s an easy, low-cost fix that makes a big difference in your pocket.
Absolutely, this makes your home feel much warmer and even protects your structure from wood rot.
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