OMG - Just worked out our gas/electricity annual bill

[~TT40~]

it is absolutely insane. I truely feel for some families who cant afford to pay the bill... our bill is higher over summer. last summer it was more for our place (3 bed 1 bathroom, and was a time when i wasnt even living her just DH who was working fulltime), than my folks (5 bed 2 bathroom) !! and we always turn off power points. we ended up turning off our pool pump. next bill was half the amount of that one. We now pay the same each month, and every 6months it reevaluates how much based on previous bills. makes it so much easier to budget and you're not stuck with a grand to pay at once. over winter ours isn't that bad cause we use our wood fire. we only have fans too no a/c. our gas (which is only connected to a heater) is bottle gas too (no natural gas in our town even though the pipe runs along the highway and every town that surrounds us has it...anyway), we have 2 bottles that were full when we moved in 18mths ago and we haven't even emptied one bottle yet (so havent had to pay for gas at all)

[Olive]

we pay the same amount on water, gas and electricity every fortnight
water: $60 = $1440
gas: $100 = $2400
electricity $130 = $3120

which = $6960 a year.
We're in credit at all times.

[Mumma T]

We pay $170 a month for both gas and electricity. We have evap cooling and ducted heating which I have set at 22 degrees as I like it warm. Being in Melb we use the heating quite alot. I feel for all the families with huge power bills.

[MummyNaomi]

Our Annual Water, Gas and Electricity Bills are as follows

Water $900
Gas $400
Electricity $4000

We only use Gas for the cooktop and Hot water, everything else is Electric. We still haven't put a washing line up outside since we built 5 years ago so we use the dryer a lot (we have drying racks in the laundry for other stuff). Our biggest electricity use is tv/computers and the reverse cycle refridgerated Aircon. We also have a beer fridge and deep freeze, both electricity guzzlers! Our Summer and Winter bills are about double what our Autumn/Spring Bills are, purely due to the heating and cooking costs

We just splashed out and installed a 8kW solar system, the electricity we export should cover our electricity bills and give us a credit to transfer to the gas bills and then some. I'm actually looking forward to our next electricity bill now!

[fionas]

Thanks everyone - looks like ours are high but not off the radar compared to other people's. It's insane isn't it? We've got a big house and we're home all day (well, not all day, we go out most days for a few hours obviously) but hopefully they'll go down when I go back to work and both girls are in school.

In the meantime, I'm going to look into solar and I've signed up for something with our provider that links to your smartmeter and tells you how much electricity you're using on an hour by hour basis. I'd really like to see how much the dryer is costing us. It's a crappy old one and I doubt it's very efficient. We have a laundry which has ducted heating so in winter (when the heating is on anyway) it would make much more sense to have a wall-mounted drying rack in there and hang the clothes on there to dry from the heater.

[Cassius2]

Gosh, it does seem that we pay so much! I always have dread when opening up the gas bill during the winter. i hate being cold so usually have it on and set to 20 that said, we turn it off in the evening and have a small space heater on instead. but yeah, i reckon ours must be up there...