With so many Americans working from home due to COVID-19 restrictions on businesses, their home electric usage has gone up — and so have their bills. A company that sells energy monitoring devices just released an analysis attaching a dollar figure to the cost and according to one of the findings, California residents spent about $176 more on their utility bills in 2020 compared to 2019. “There is a real cost to staying at home,” said George Zavaliagkos, vice president of technology at Sense, the maker of the monitoring devices. “Maybe you don’t notice it month to month, but we definitely noticed it over the year.”