The out of sight electric bills are the result of consumers choosing to "save money" by buying power on the wholesale rather than retail market. Because of demand the "spot" price for power went from the normal $1,300 per unit to over $9,000 and homes with electric heat sucked up a huge amount of power at that elevated rate and are faced with quite legitimate bills reportedly as high as $19,000. Those who buy power at retail generally pay a flat rate per KWH will have a higher bill as well because of additional power usage, but more like the normal summer A/C bill when the outside temperatures are in the 105° range. Even those of us with natural gas heat will have higher electric bills than normal due to usage, but probably less than our mid-summer bills. Another discovery we made was our solar panels that normally produce a bit over 30 kWh per day this time of year only managed 0.5 kWh a day when covered with three inches of snow.
