In the past three months or so, I have turned the water faucet (on the wall) for the washing machine to a point where only small amounts of water is pouring out when the machine fills. I find that allowing massive amounts of water to pour out causes an irritating bang when the valve shuts. Now, it takes roughly 5 times the time to fill the machine up. Coincidentally, my electricity bill for the past two months has jumped more than double what it used to be for the same period. It is even worse than the month of August, when the a/c is turned on very frequently. I was just wondering if there is a correlation between extreme electricity use and more time used to fill up the washing machine? Does the process of filling the machine up with water use a lot of electricity?

Turn the water back on full blast. And yes, it does waste more electric constantly having the cold water enter the hot water tank over a longer period. May I suggest doing the wash in cold water instead? My wash gets just as clean with cold water. It's the detergent and washer agitation that really does the cleaning - not the warm or hot water. Only wash things that MUST have warm or hot water to properly wash and get clean such as towels, sheets, etc. You can save a lot of electric by just doing that. Get used to the bang - think of it as saving money noise and you'll do just fine.