As the topic suggest.
Thanks
Just getting an idea for the moment.
How Much Is Your Electricity Bill and How Many of You at Home?
grabngo on 28/03/2017 - 20:39
Comments
That seems high???
Long hot QLD Summer
Yep, our air con has been on 24/7 since Christmas. Just got our bill $640. Thought it was ok considering.
3 adults in our home.@PVA:
I made the effort about 10 years back to 'toughen up' in a bid to save money after 5 years of aircon every summer since i moved up here. Has worked out well.
We have been paying around $400 a quarter but with the missus back at work and the little fellas in childcare that should come down. The little fellas had trouble sleeping during the day with out air con.
We originally built without aircons but cranky toddlers changed our minds.@DarwinBoy:
I am getting the opposite. The air con is on more and more. And a lot more than years back.
Our cars have the air on all the time too, and same at work. I guess I'm used to it and want it.You have to have the air on for the kids, let them sleep through the night easier.
I did 560 no solar dam Queensland summer
@PVA: It's how much heat energy transfers in (or cold air moves out) of your home that counts, not how long your AC is on.
Gaps between the floorboards, around the wall skirting, windows and doors, and how much heat convects or radiates in- this is what costs you.
Only once all this has had the effect of increasing the temperature above the setting you chose on the AC, will your AC start cooling again, which is what costs you. Leaving it on when there is no cooling (or heating if it is reverse-cycle) to do will make practically no difference to your bill, as only the fan will be actually be working.
But remember, sealing your home to save money can cost you big time too, eg if you run out of oxygen or if CO levels increase.
3 Aircons
Pool filter
Old plasma
No gas but I do use gas cooker.(butane gas refills funded by SCA)butane gas refills funded by SCA? How?
Pool will do it! We had ours removed (Adelaide is cold most of the year) and our bill halved.
@johndemonik: We had a fibreglass pool so we called a demolition company.
* Called local council for compliance
* Drained pool (only allowed to drain to waste water inlet . not stormwater)
* Demolition guys cut the pool into pieces and took off site for dumping
* Filled with free dirt from a guy on Gumtree digging to install a pool ($0 delivered)
* Photos to prove to council that pool has been removed (especially for subdivision of block)
* Sold pool equipment on Gumtree to recover cost
* Install new garden (work in progress)
no cure for the hot weather.
Might move to NZ
wait until you see their power bills… :|
Car rego is heaps cheaper though 150/yr vs the almost 800 bucks we pay in Victoria. That plus the fttp internet with gigabit speeds that will still be a distant dream for most Aussies thanks to Turn bulls mtm network.
Get 5kw solar and you can run the a/c for free all summer.
$350 +/-$50 a quarter and 2 plus 1 toddler
$970 quarter - 3 ??????????????? whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat. 290-370 but I'll be switching to some backyard company with better rates soon (2 people).
$220 per quarter - 2 people - Melbourne
Used to be around $330 per quarter - 5 peopleWho is the provider? Good service? Bills come on time? Any Issues? I might look into that
Holy crap thats cheap.
We (2 adults) around 140-150 a month for us in Melbourne.
Was with Powershop when it was 5 people - now with globird.
Happy with Globird?
There are some good reviews on them. That is price and service.
Cheers@vinni9284: Globird jacked up their prices a few months after I joined and is no longer cheap. I would recommend Hydro Power in Victoria
@Ryder: Thanks mate. Yeah… It seems like when organisations become popular, their prices start to climb. Will look into it. CHeers
Yep as above. I don't think mine is much different to pacific hydro at the moment but I'll check it out.
Edit; yeah pacific hydro is cheaper as of the 1st of March. How on earth do I sign up with them?!?! I'm guessing I have to call or something.
@rambutann:
I am really happy with Globird, using them since December, my latest bill showsDescription Period Quantity Unit Rate $ Total Discount Rate $* Discount Total*
Electricity Usage 16-Feb - 17-Mar 141.6470 kWh x 0.2580 $36.54 0.1729 $24.49
Service To Property Charge 16-Feb - 17-Mar 29 days x 0.9800 $28.42 0.6566 $19.04
mine also around the same with Momentum
One word - solar
Lol no.
You'll never get your money back on the initial purchase especially on the new tarrifs.
Agreed.
25c per kw/h to buy.
5c per kw/h to feed in.What a joke.
In VIC, from 1 July this will increase to 11.3c
http://delwp.vic.gov.au/energy/electricity/victorian-feed-in…
Solar plus battery backup? Maybe would pay itself after 5 - 10 years?
By that time, most of the cells would be dead from the harsh Australian sun.
yeah I understand but with power prices soaring it might be worth it to use solar for your power needs.
@burningrage:
Wow, thanks for the post. 1 Jan this year made my blood boil dropping from $0.33 to $0.05, renewables should be encouraged!And FWIW I believe if you are getting a 1K elecricitry bill for the quarter you are mad not to look at solar to reduce your billed usage - feed in rate doesn't matter as much when you are using that much power….
I think you need to learn what a "net meter" is….
If im buying at 25c, i save 25c during the day when im home…
I also set my dishwasher etc to run during the day when im not even home.Im all for solar (and have it) but at the same time we cant really have the government paying your power bill with HUGE feed in rates.
Feed in should just be similar to pull in, or some sort of load based open market system down the line. 6c is robbery.@Danthemanz:
Agreed, but the government subsidising is (was?) buying them carbon credits as every watt put in the grid by solar owners = less coal burnt.
It's not just about balancing the cost, I'm pretty sure it was to meet co2 emissions targets and that doesn't happen for free.
Although this government seems to be ignoring the obvious and continuing its highly profitable relationship with coal.
How do you figure that? Install a system that matches your day time power usage and you get that portion of your usage for 'free'. Pay back in about 4 years.
Most I've seen are 7-10 years payback period. A lot of panels or companies haven't even existed that long so reliability is very variable. High risk IMO.
Usage varies too - no good if you work M-F 9-5 as you're out nearly all the time. Old couple that are up at 6 and go to bed at 8, then yeah solar is probably 90% of their bill covered.
@rochow:
Do you turn the fridge and the wifi off when you go out?
Nearly 3/4 of people spend some reasonable portion of their daylight hours at home, and most a big fraction of their weekend. The number out of home between sunrise and sunset everyday is a very small minority.
Most people can run the dishwasher, clothes washer/dryer etc. when they leave in the morning, and put appliances like pool pumps and aircon on timers.A 3kw system costs about $3000. If you use half your power during the day, and half at night it will cover the daytime consumption of an average Aussie house (21kWh) with a bit to spare.
If that is 10kWh, at 25c per kWh, or $912 worth of power purchases avoided each year it will pay for itself quickly.
Note I agree conservation is preferable to adding generation capacity, but a house with a part time worker, some kids and scheduling their power use could easily time shift half their power use to daylight. We do nothing at all to push our use toward daylight hours and still use about half our power in the sunny times.PV panels have been available in the retail market since the 1970s, so are more proven, than, for example, mobile phones or DVD players. I guess if you still use telex to send messages it looks like new and unproven technology.
@mskeggs: $3000 from where? I've only seen Eurosolar and similar that are trashed online. Everyone else is much more.
The brand of panels and invertors themselves, not the technology.
@rochow:
https://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/residential-solar-pv-pri…
Low price is $1.07 per watt, I admit I was a bit over enthusiastic, but would point out the sharpest bargains on here are delivering 5kW for $3k. The median is $1.53 a watt, which is 5 year pay back instead of under 4 years - still very competitive, I would suggest, and all assuming no power price rises.
I paid nearly $10k for my 3kw panels 7 years ago, and warranty was a bigger deal at that price. I would be much more open to cheap and cheerful systems these days as it doesn't need to last 20 years to get your money back, and the failure mode for PV panels is such that even a terrible install would see only a couple failing and the others would keep going. Admittedly, time might prove me wrong, but there hasn't been any mass age related failure of panels so far.For everybody who has roof space and some power use during daylight hours, some solar panels is a 'no brainer' decision.
Hi. How do you measure your solar generation? Can you do this in real time?
@Dozingquinn:
I use a device from Efergy. I have the one that connects to my ADSL router and reports data to a website to make pretty graphs.
Massive disagree. Anyone with any sense and a few grand should be able to pay off the system in around 7 years.
Lol at the same time the system starts to fail / needs repairs. Yeah great idea.
Chuck that money into an investment instead and you'll end up way ahead.
@Duram: I'm reasonably confident with a 10 year warranty on all the gear, with the confidence of 20 year warranty for the exact same stuff in the US
I kept close account of my bills and did the maths it took 6 years for me to pay off initial cost and have had the panels another 4 years saving an additional $2400. This is on usage alone not including any return from grid. Please share the math you have done.
There is another way to look at solar. Say it costs $10k to setup a decent system. Assuming that you have a mortgage, this is paid out of your offset account which causes yearly interest to increase by $350-$400. If the solar reduced your electricity bills by $1000 per year then you have $600 extra cash each year. One day you'll sell your house get a bit more for it with solar installed anyway.. payback happens when you sell your house and you get a cash benefit in the meantime.
If you're in Sydney that solar investment may even appreciate at 18% p.a. with the rest of your house ;-)
It doesnt cost $10k and you can save more than a grand a year. Payback periods are <5 years.
Put in solar about 4 years ago in SA , 5 kw system with 22 panels - cost 8k and the government subsidy only ended say 5 months ago , prior to that I was getting an additional 16 cents per kw exported
run what I can during the day , including a heated pool, 2 adults and 2 children in a large house that are large energy consumers
Bill typically comes in at $150 to $200 per quarter, and I have recently switched to Simply Energy as they recently came in to SA market, offered me cheaper rates than agl who I have been with for ever, and offered a 30 % off total bill combined with Raa discount paying on time
No complaints so far
I dont think you understand how solar works…The purpose is to use free energy…selling the excess is just a bonus.
i.e. running ducted a/c all day in summer for $0
people buy solar and expect to sell back to company, i got mine and use the crap out of it as much as i can, especially this summer, air con on at around 7am and off around 8.30 max speed lowest temp because it is on the whole day so as a result of that the temp inside my house is hovering around 18 to 22 during the hottest day( I am living in Melbourne btw). and believe it or not the bill is 40 to 50 dollars, during winter it is a bit higher around 60 to 80 depends if that week has rain or not. My system is 5kw only and beautifully facing north, in the end it is just how you manage it
No Roof
About $100 every 60days - 2 people Melbourne
that's cheap
Who is your provider?
OC Energy - my apartment building has an agreement with OC Energy.
Solar at 6c per kw is a waste of investmet etc
Solar is profitable if you use it to offset day time usage at 25c kWh or more.
Exactly!
We have been doing exactly that for the last 4 years, and are almost revenue neutral.
2 adults, very large house, humungous ducted RC air con, couple of fridges, clothes dryer in winter.
Revenue neutral because we use none at 33c per kWh when the sun shines, and the 8c per kWh that we sell to the grid just offsets what we buy from the grid.We now have the AGL Virtual Power Plant battery, and figures for this month (first full month of operation) are 619kWh produced, 380kWh consumed, and savings of $119.
That does not include the supply charge of $19.85 per quarter, but that's not worth including.And, when the power goes down, we will be the only ones in the street watching TV and drinking cold beer :-)
Wow that is quite a low supply charge. In VIC supply charge is in excess of $1 a day which itself makes around $90 per quarter.
In VIC, from 1 July this will increase to 11.3c
http://delwp.vic.gov.au/energy/electricity/victorian-feed-in…
Normally around $250/quarter (1 adult, 2 young kids), last winter $460/quarter (3 adults, 2 young kids). In Hobart.
$440
3 people
air con 50% of the time
solar
sydneyJust got a bill of $540 for last quarter for 1 person.
Note I don't have gas connected.pay monthly
usually around $75 ($95 in winter running ducted heating)
4 people at home
we have instantaneous gas hot water so no constant heating (before we had this installed out bill was around $150 per month)To clear up our gas bill is around $85 every two months goes to about $190 every two months in winter running ducted heating 18 hours a day at 22 degrees.
Around $100 per month. 2 adults 2 kids. No gas. Electric hot water unit n electric cooktop. Melbourne
$400 summer quarter, $550 winter quarter, low 300s in spring/autumn quarters.
1 adult, 1 gaming computer, regional NSW.
Wow that seems like a lot for 1 person
It is a lot, don't have proper air-con or heating, so it's all portable electric which seems to have a pretty big impact, plus the computer is ridiculous.
I seem to pay about 8c a day more supply charge, and 6c a kwh more than my friends in the nearest big city too, so that doesn't help.
Didn't electricity privatisation work out well!
Why did we vote these people into power after they delivered the highest energy prices in the world?
260 dollars qtr.
1300 kwh in 92 days
Sub tropic NSW climate zone 2
http://www.abcb.gov.au/Resources/Tools-Calculators/Climate-Z…
family house- gas stove,open wood fire,electric off peak
I'm curious if anyone knows how much electricity a gaming computer and high-end monitor would likely use in comparison to other appliances in a house? Roughly 10% of the power bill? More/less?
500w power supply, and maybe 100w for the monitor, so 600w if it is being flogged. The power use drops for lesser tasks.
For comparison, a fan heater uses 2000w, an oven 2500w, a window aircon 1500w.
While a LED bulb uses 10w, a macbook, about 15w and a fan about 120w.
It is a moderate power usage appliance, costing about 12c an hour to run, so less than 10% of the bill unless you are gaming more than 8 hours per day.Thanks for the breakdown, ~12c an hour to run is actually cheaper than I was expecting.
Unless you are actively gaming or benchmarking the actual usage would be closer to 100w for the PC itself, even browsing the net or watching video etc.
It's going to depend on the components and utilisation. Some of my machines idle at 200w, but sits at 1000w when utilised fully. Your best bet is buying one of those $40 power plugs that read electricity usage for the items you plug into it. I bought one at a local supermarket, and it was… eye opening.
I got one of those plugs too when I was trying to calculate what to cut back on in order to get my power costs down. My pc idles at a bit above 350w and is a little below 1000w when running full on. That's not even including the monitors (x3 when working, x1 when gaming)…
Depending on whether I do any work from home or not my computer is on an average of 4 hours a night, and about 10 on weekends.
If I take a median of the idle and max, which is approx 675w (computer runs at full more than at idle end so this is an under-estimation), against my kwh price I'm looking at 17.5c an hour, or a little under a dollar a day. So per quarter its about $90 or so of my usage, far higher if I do work at home a lot.
The per hour price can look cheap, and it is if a computer is single graphics card which isn't used that much, but it can add up to quite a lot over a quarter in a high spec system…That is an insanely power hungry system!
My i5 OCd to 4.5GHz with RX 480 8GB idles at 80W and runs about 300W at full load :)
@IamEzza:
It is a stupid system, triple graphics, a few years old now so they aren't the most energy efficient.
PSU efficiency is another factor, so it may be drawing more than it's utilising effectively.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-…
Thats the best Gpu you can get atm (even though I call bull on that idle). So around half what mskeggs eluded to.
Boiling a pot on the kettle costs around 5 cents each time.
If you are curious to buy a cheap usage meter preferably one that also has a function where you can enter your kwh rates. I have a belkin https://www.amazon.com/Belkin-Conserve-Insight-Monitor-F7C00…
It also sits about middle in energy efficiency as newer cards are far better than they were even one year ago.
You can have 2 1080s worth of power consumption per 1 of my cards at full load…
Mine is a few years old, 3570k 7970 GPU, 6 hard drives, 2x 27" IPS monitors.
I leave it on 24/7 and it uses 175 watts if I'm not playing anything, I don't use any power saving features really.Probably costs about $1.20 a day or so @ .26 a kwh
Running an extra 1000watt gaming rig changes my bill by ~$100-$150 a quarter which is 30% of my bill.
According to the ABS, the average household uses between 18 and 22 kWH (depending on the climate and whether they have gas as well).
If you pay 25c a kWh, which is about right in NSW, and 80c per day connection charge, and average house will pay $522 per quarter for 20kwh per day usage inc connection charge.
$297 with AGL in SA.
qtr ended 20feb2017, 95 days
5 people in a 200sqm double brick house
limited air con usage due to milder SA summer - approx. 60 hours usage x4 units so 240 hours in total of 'air cond time'.
6kw solar system
off peak hot water
7% discountmeter readings for the qtr from the bill;
871kwh peak power
714kwh hot water
2197kwh solar fed back to grid (the inverter recorded approx. 3250kwh generated in same period)I tried looking at different options 2 weeks ago and there wasn't anything much better i.e. not enough to pay changeover/final readings etc.
tried 2 online comparison sitesYou need a battery dude
yep, and we are.
Have 1.5 kw solar on premium feed in. Our total bill for the 15-16 financial year was 258.37. Thats with 2 adults and 2 kids(under 10). Over the spring and summer quarters our bills have been in credit by about $25 each quarter. Over the autumn quarter we average under $100. It's our winter bill that's highest due to usage from heating system(gas ducted but fans use quite a bit). Pretty much all devices in our house are energy efficient. We do all dish and clothes washing in off peak over night by timer on devices. All other devices are switched off at power point so use little standby. Only device on all the time is a hp g8 microserver but that uses no more than 40 watts/hour and fridge/freezer(again bought specifically due to energy efficiency) We paid back our solar investment within 2.5 years of getting it based on savings. Has been pure savings since then and that was about 5 years ago now. Still have 10 years left on premium feed in.
$970 quarter - 3