That's very interesting considering we live at opposite ends of the country--I live in San Diego. I just put in air conditioning and took a big hit on my kilowatt hours--it went up to 480 (for essentially the same period as you). I know the electric companies send us these things to help but I'm always struck by the comparing apples to oranges problem inherent in comparing different households. My wife and I are retired and live alone in our house (1200 ft/sq). Being retired we are home a lot using energy while many of our neighbors are at work using their employer's energy. But it appears they compare us to them and find us wanting.

The other thing that bugs us is that we're often gone a month or more at a time traveling (no one home and everything pretty much turned off) and yet our use doesn't seem to drop all that much.

So it's all a bit mystical to me. So far we can afford it and are lucky that we only have to run the a/c a couple of hours a day in the afternoon.