How much is your electricity bill?

[Danni]

Thanks guys..so I guess we are on par?

Arimeh, how do you guys keep it so low?

We run a big fridge, and a big freezer, all cooking is on electricity, evaporative cooling and fans. We have 4 bedrooms ad the last quarter we had 4 adults and 3 kids. SO I guess thats not too bad?

[Inertia]

Not too bad at all. Ours is around $330 a quarter with 2 adults, 5 kids and 2 computers that don't get powered down overnight. The office is kept powered.

We have an aircon but its borked. A heater in winter and that bill doubles to 600ish. I am going to be a little more strict on its use this year. Especially considering everyone has been using my anemia as an excuse to turn it on. We do have 2 fridges and a chest freezer too.

[HotI]

All the electricity rates went up at the end of last year. So unless you are still on a contract, your rates (per unit of electricity) may have gone up.

[Peach*]

Our last bill was just under $180 for the quarter, with 2 adults and infant in a 2 bed townhouse. We switch everything off at the wall except the fridge and only had the air con on for about 7 days in summer (DP labelled me the 'air con nazi').

[Tinks]

I got my bill last week, it was $240, we have a 3 bed 2 bath house with electric cooking and hot water, we have 2 fridges running and I use the dryer every day.. I don't understand how our bill is so cheap. Our last house was half the size of the one we're in now and the power bills were never under $350. Weird as.

[Danni]

Tinkerbell...that sounds very weird!

[[M]umma[M]ia]

Our last one would have been about $400-450. One bedroom unit, 2 adults, 1 kid. But we dont really pay too much attention coz we do easypay at $80 a fortnight.

[Glamourcide]

I'm spewing over our power bill. We just got our bill for the last quarter and it's $425 - which is about on par with our last one, but since we got the last one we've turned off the ancient old fridge in the shed to save power, banned BIL from 'entertaining' in the shed (therefore saving having the lights burning all night and having his stereo/game console/TV/god knows what else going), and we've barely used the air-con since Christmas/New Year's when it was stinking hot...
I remembered hearing somewhere that a lot of the time the power company will just do a guesstimate based on your 'normal' usage and send you a bill without actually reading your meter, I know our meter is at the side of the house (and we have a fully fenced yard with lots of plants, it's not at all difficult to get through the front gate but I have had a postie stand on the footpath and holler at me to come out in case I had a dog in the yard), so I told DH to contact Ergon to ask that they send someone out to read the meter instead of just sending an estimate.
They emailed back saying they'd send someone out, but it was 'accurate', whatever that means (I don't know how they get an exact measure of your power use without actually reading the meter, kwim?), but they still had DH's parents details of this address (they used to live here) and turns out they haven't had an actual person come to read the meter for more than five years because their notes said that a 'large dog' was kept on the premises (DH's childhood pet Rex, who was put down at LEAST 5 years ago, Rex was long gone before I even met DH and we've known each other for years now), so they assured us they've changed that and will send someone out next quarter.

For the record, we're a 3-bed, 1-bath house (about the size of a showbox, tbh) with two adults, a teenager who takes 1.5-hour long showers twice a day, and a toddler. DH and I try very hard to cut down on our power usage to save money, but BIL kind of throws that out the window when he has two TVs, a games console, a stereo, a hair straightener (which he actually stole from ME), a laptop, a pedestal fan AND an alarm clock running all at once (he has to run extension leads from DD's room across the hallway because he's run out of power points), and, like I said, uses all the hot water in one sitting... I know DH and I use a fair bit of power (we have an Austar box, TV, computer and landline in the lounge) and we should be switching things like microwaves etc off at the wall when we're not using them... but I still blame BIL completely

[nic]

Gothmum, Electricity rates in Qld went up recently, I think it was upto 15% increase, depending on which company people were with.

If Ergon have been estimating your bill, they usually have it written in big bold letters, that it is an estimate as there was a dog on the premises. They will only let you go for around 3-4 quarters with an estimate, and then they send a letter saying that you are suppose to provide them with access to the meter, and if you don't, then you will have to have the meter moved to a location that they can access, at your cost BTDT...

Also, watch them if they are sending someone out to reread your meter, they usually charge you for it, from memory i *think* it was something like $50.

Nic

[Pandora]

I got my bill last week, it was $240, we have a 3 bed 2 bath house with electric cooking and hot water, we have 2 fridges running and I use the dryer every day.. I don't understand how our bill is so cheap. Our last house was half the size of the one we're in now and the power bills were never under $350. Weird as.

Some of it could be the efficiency of the hot water service and any heating or cooling that you have. in general older appliances use more power than newer ones, but Im guessing most of them are the same ones you would have had at the old house? If you have a different energy supplier at the new house that can come in to play as well.

[Miss E]

Ours is generally somewhere in between $250 and $300. We've got a 3 bed townhouse, with just the two of us (for a few more weeks anyway) but neither of us is home during the day.

I think the appliances you use really do make a big difference, our washer, dryer, fridge, aircon/heater etc all have high energy ratings and I think our bills are quite cheap considering how much we use them.

We're actually pretty bad when it comes to electricity consumption, the computers are never shut down, DH constantly has the LCD TV on (they apparently gobble power), the aircon/heater is on most of the time (except for a few weeks a year when it isn't necessary) and most things we don't turn off at the switch. We do however have gas hot water which I think makes a difference...

[Just Me]

Our last bill was $645 - we have a 4 bedroom house and converted the double garage into a playroom. I am a SAHM so I run a/c all day (Townsville is soooo hot). I use the ones in the loungeroom from when we get up till when we go to bed, the ones in the kids bedrooms while they have naps and sleep at night time and our bedroom at night time. We use the playroom a/c while we are playing (2 hours in the morning, 2 hours in the afternoon).

Our house is brand new and the builder did not put the a/c on tarriff so we were paying full price electricity for them. I have had him come out and fix it since so we worked out we should be paying about $250 less this coming bill. We also pay about $200 more over summer for electricity anyway. When I was working, our electricity was only about $150 because we were running a/c about 42 hours less a week than what I do now (and we only had to a/c the master bedroom not 3 rooms every night).

Part of our bill is also for the Qld Ambulance Service (about $30 I think).

ETA - We also had about 4 - 6 weeks where it did not stop raining over summer so we used our dryer for everything though the pay off was that we did turn the a/c off for some of the day because it was cool enough and breezy enough to do without them. We had to leave fans on in rooms we weren't using to try and stop mould and other things getting into the carpet and furniture from the general damp.

Gotta love Townsville

[Tinks]

Some of it could be the efficiency of the hot water service and any heating or cooling that you have. in general older appliances use more power than newer ones, but Im guessing most of them are the same ones you would have had at the old house? If you have a different energy supplier at the new house that can come in to play as well.

We bought a new fridge when we moved here and have the old one on our verandah, so we were only running 1 fridge at the old place. At both places we have wood heating and an aircon. Except the aircon here is a split system which we only use in summer. All the other appliances are the same. I've gone from paying $70 a fortnight to $30 - I pay fortnightly by direct debit and this bill was $190 CREDIT!! So I called them and they refunded it to me in a cheque BONUS!

Funny thing is we have a unit attached to this house which has a tennant in it. THe bill is in my name, it just gets charged to her rent. The unit bill was $220. I was shocked that it was almost the same as our bill and our house is huge.

I won't complain though

[westy]

Our last electricity bill was $980...yes that correct $980!!!!

We have a spa that runs twice a day, we have two fish tanks that a constantly running and we use the air con alot....DH is a shift worker so when it's really hot he has to have it on so he can sleep through the day. I know this is high but we figure there is no point buying a house with ducted air and a spa and not using them so we are happy to pay the $$$$. I pay money inot the electricity every week so by the time we get our bills we dont usually owe too much, this one we still had to pay $526.

[aussienic]

Ours this quarter was just ridiculous.. I was using the drier but now thats been put a stop to.. It was $849 for this bill.. there are 2 adults and 4 kids.. Our hot water system has also sprung a leak so we think that has contributed to it as well..

We are usually around the $500-600 mark over summer and the rest of the year around 400..