January Electric Bill - I screwed up

[restorer]

Just got my Scottish Power bill for January, $45.00. How did I screw up? The shop and the house together could not have used THAT much power. I run the house and the woodworking shop, on a commercial meter and it's $45. what did I do wrong. Under a ton of pellets, keep the cmputer on most for the time, run a few fans and cook three meals a day, unit heaters or convection oven. And now they think they earned this much? Who are they kidding? Snails use more electricity. :cheese: :coolsmile:

 

[jjbaer]

Just got my Scottish Power bill for January, $45.00. How did I screw up? The shop and the house together could not have used THAT much power. I run the house and the woodworking shop, on a commercial meter and it's $45. what did I do wrong. Under a ton of pellets, keep the cmputer on most for the time, run a few fans and cook three meals a day, unit heaters or convection oven. And now they think they earned this much? Who are they kidding? Snails use more electricity. :cheese: :coolsmile:

You saying it's too low or too high? How many KW-hrs did you use on it? What were last months and last years (at this same time) bills? Look on your bill...was it an "estimated" or an "actual" meter reading?

 

[Corey]

I'm gonna guess by all the smiley's this is sarcasm? Although I often ask where all my electricity goes, too. My last bill showed an average usage of 45 KW per day. That is for two people who are gone 8hrs a day and sleeping another 6, so the house is 'idle' for 14 hours a day. I have gas furnace and water heater, so the only big electric draws are the stove, microwave, clothes dryer and hot tub. But, man! Thinking the house uses an average of almost 2,000 watts continuously!

 

[njtomatoguy]

Mine went up too...

$60.94 for gas and electric to $62.76 for both..

Electric went down, but gas went up.. :coolsmile: cooked extra last month..

 

[Rob From Wisconsin]

You are all too spoiled!!
Our electric bill last month was ~ $150!!
Electric Hot Water, Boiler Pump, Well, etc.
Put the Hot Water on a Timer - hopefully that will help.
We are also on a plan that saves you money on the
basis of using your electricity on "off-peak" times.
That's already been saving us about $15/month.

Rob

 

[drizler]

Ours was a measley $100 and thats a bargain considering its from NY where taxes are as plentiful as fees, service charges and all other forms of legalized extortion. Of that just over $50 was real electric used. The rest is just banditry. That is a typical good month with minimal use of the boiler beyond heating hot water.

 

[Starter]

This thread made me think that we in Malta are being ripped off!

My last electricity bill showed that we use 19KWh per day. The bill of one month of that usage was 36 maltese liri, which is $108.

:long:

 

[got wood?]

18.8 cents kW/hour in MA...>$100/mo is not unusual...I would love to see something close to $45!!

 

[hearthtools]

My Bill is over $250
The lowest bill I every had was $150
3 PC's running
1 New refrigerator
1 small chest frezer
Deep well that pumps water up 550 feet up
then pumps over 100 yards UP HILL to my 2500 gal storage tank
then a 1hpr booster pump that pumps to the presssure tank
Heat with pellet
cook with gas
dry with gas
Hot water gas
only two of us and a 2 years old not a lot of lights on
but our rate is over .17 KWH

 

[jjbaer]

18.8 cents kW/hour in MA...>$100/mo is not unusual...I would love to see something close to $45!!

You pay the same as starter...about 18.9 cents/Kw-hr...extremely high.....

 

[got wood?]

18.8 cents kW/hour in MA...>$100/mo is not unusual...I would love to see something close to $45!!

You pay the same as starter...about 18.9 cents/Kw-hr...extremely high.....

Believe me, I've looked loooong and hard at a grid-tied solar setup...the payback is still too far out even with state/fed incentives...I'm working on the conservation side first.

 

[Starter]

18.8 cents kW/hour in MA...>$100/mo is not unusual...I would love to see something close to $45!!

You pay the same as starter...about 18.9 cents/Kw-hr...extremely high.....

Wow, you say it's high... couple that up with the fact that our wages are half of what one gets in the US! Our electricity bills doubled these last 2 years. It's because of the price of oil, they said... :roll:

We try to keep the cost as low as possible - we cook with gas and we have a solar water heater. The only stuff we have which uses constant electrical power are two freezers, one refridgerator and the aquarium. The TV and computer are on for approximately 8 hours a day, and we barely turn on the air-conditioners now. The washing machine is used twice weekly and the electric kettle for maybe 3 minutes per day.

The fireplace we're planning to install will pay itself within a couple of years!

How many cents/KW-hr are you guys charged?

 

[WarmGuy]

We got our electric bill down from about $60/month to $35/month (avg 10 KWH/Day).

One change was to reduce "phantom loads," that is, loads caused by things that draw a few watts even when they are off. I found that with everything in the house off, I was still drawing 160 watts. You can buy a kill-a-watt meter to find out how much things draw (e.g. TV 10 watts, chargers, 4 watts, cable modem + router: 15 watts, etc.)

We've changed almost all of our lighting to compact flourescent.

Here's how to find out how much your whole house is drawing:

1. Go to the electric meter and use your watch to measure how many seconds it takes for the horizontal disk to make one revolution.

2. If there is a "7.2 KH" somewhere on your meter, divide 25,920 by the number of seconds you measured to get the current power usage in watts.

For example, if it take 60 seconds for the disk to go around once, you are currently using 25,920/60 = 432.0 Watts.

If there is a "3.6 KH" on your meter, divide 12,960 by the number seconds you measured to get the current power usage in watts.

 

[jjbaer]

18.8 cents kW/hour in MA...>$100/mo is not unusual...I would love to see something close to $45!!

You pay the same as starter...about 18.9 cents/Kw-hr...extremely high.....

Wow, you say it's high... couple that up with the fact that our wages are half of what one gets in the US! Our electricity bills doubled these last 2 years. It's because of the price of oil, they said... :roll:

We try to keep the cost as low as possible - we cook with gas and we have a solar water heater. The only stuff we have which uses constant electrical power are two freezers, one refridgerator and the aquarium. The TV and computer are on for approximately 8 hours a day, and we barely turn on the air-conditioners now. The washing machine is used twice weekly and the electric kettle for maybe 3 minutes per day.

The fireplace we're planning to install will pay itself within a couple of years!

How many cents/KW-hr are you guys charged?

I live in Ohio and I pay 10 cents/KW-hr fully loaded (total cost of bill with all junk, delivery and generation fees divided by the KW-hrs). You stated your last electricity bill showed that you used 19KWh per day which equates to 570 KW-hrs for a 30 day month. I'd suggest the following to reduce it: 1) use compact florescent bulbs instead of incandescent, 2) maybe try to get by on 1 freezer instead of two (are you counting the freezer in the fridge as one or do you have 3 total: the freezer in the fridge and two additional larger freezers?), 3) unplug items like the TV, VCR, etc from the wall when you're not using them. I know this is a pain but items like these use electricity even when they're "turned off" but are still plugged in the wall. We call these "parasitic losses" or "stand by" losses because, even when the item isn't being used it still consumes power. There have been several studies done and they show these losses account for 7-15% of all electrical consumption. Here's what this study concluded:

"So Dr Meier and his team went on to measure standby-power consumption directly, in an empirical study. Their results, published in 2000, revealed that standby power accounted for as much as 10% of household power-consumption in some cases. That same year, a similar study in France found that standby power accounted for 7% of total residential consumption. Further studies have since come to similar conclusions in other developed countries, including the Netherlands, Australia and Japan. Some estimates put the proportion of consumption due to standby power as high as 13%.

You can find it here: http://www.cameraontheroad.com/index.php?tag=environment

You can't unplug your fridge or freezer but you can unplug other less critical items when they're not being used. With 3 freezers, you can routinely make sure the coils are free from lint and other obstructions so that they operate more efficiently. I'd also check the energy tags on these freezers because if they're older devices, they may be energy hogs. One final comment: to get you in the mindset that "every little bit helps" and to not overlook ANY item plugged into the wall, consider this: even something as innocuous as a 4-watt "night-light" bulb, if left burning 24 hrs per day for a month, consumes over 50 cents per month at 18 cents/KW-hr........... I'd bet that doing all of the above would reduce your bill by 10% or more. Good luck and let us know what happens.