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I just got my power bill and am worried it is high, although I have nothing to compare it too.
I normally pay, and throw it out, but we are on a very tight financial mission atm so I am looking at ways to reduce it and would like to compare to others.
91 days = $369.00
This is the one I received today, so that is for all the cooling etc.
So how much is yours and do you have a big house, lots of people etc?
We are a family of 4 and have a 4 bedroom house. We didn't use the cooler much this last summer. Maybe 5 days all up. Our hot water and stove are gas. We just got our bill and it is $404. Our bill just after winter is always huge for 3 months. About $880 last year because of heating.
ours was taht much in our old place, regularly between 380-430 a quarter.
with 3 of us, 3br 16sq house, a/c and ducted heating.
Havent had one from the new house yet, they forgot to turn on our metre :o
I just paid mine for the quarter and it was nearly $275.00
That nearly blew my socks off cos its normally around the $150 mark.
We have a very small house - 2 adults, 2 kids. Our hot water system was leaking during that period though - so thats why it was so expensive.
When we had our fish tank, it was always close to $1000 per quarter. Then when it was gone, it came down to around $300-$400. Our last one was just over $500, but the price went up here, and we had been using a dryer for all our clothes as we lost our clothes line in a storm.
I usually keep my electricity bills for a year or two, so when the bill arrives for the same quarter next year, I can have a look and compare them. Look for how much usage there was, not how many $$ it is, that way you will know if it is you or if the company has hiked prices :)
Nic
I'm not sure but I am going to call Tru and find out as I am sure I am due for a bill.
From Dec - Feb ours was $440 with 3 adults, heating equiptment for reptile tanks on 24/7 a fish tank and a couple of fans going most of the time
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?
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. :rolleyes: We do have 2 fridges and a chest freezer too.
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.
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').
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.
Tinkerbell...that sounds very weird!
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.
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 :D
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
Our last bill (bi monthly) was a bit high for us, at $324.50. We had been using AC like it was going out of fashion and due to it being wet season I was also using the dryer daily. The bill before was about the same as our bills in SA were, and we only have electricty here, no gas, and the SA electricity rates are higher than the Qld rates.
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.:
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...
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 :)
Geepers, my last one made all yours look fantastic.
I just pait $840 for the summer quarter.
Mind you we had 19 days in a row over 40degrees while I was really pregnant and the ac was on non stop for 2 weeks.....
Mmmm im like you Kim.....yours all looks fantastic. Last winter was $800...havent received summer bill yet - but we had aircon on nearly every day, and our aircon in our room on at night....so im expecting the same.....:rolleyes:
Mwah ha, our last bill for the summer quarter was $199. ;)
We have two adults at home all day and bubs and we run an office out of the house.But all our cooking and hot water is gas, so that helps. We turn almost everything off at the powerpoint as much as possible, and we don't have a clothes drier. Our globes are mainly the electricity efficient ones and we usually only have one light on in the house at any time. But, we do both have our computers on all the time and we run two fans overnight for white sleep noise.
Dunno how we do it so cheap!
Our last one was $575, that was with no aircon. We have a pool so that uses a fair bit of elec. Just waiting to see this one as we have had 2 a/c's on the go all summer. Ahh well, you can't put a price on comfort I say.
when you guys are referring to big power bills for heating... Im guessing you're not talking about gas heating?
I think our winter power bill is quite good, but the gas is much higher?
i really need to start keeping bills and taking notice now i think!
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 ;)
Ours was $600 for last quarter. There are 3 adults and 2 children, but we have 2 snake enclosures that are heated all day, 2 fish tanks, and the housemate uses the dryer for EVERYTHING. Our stovetop is gas but the oven isn't and we loved the aircon in summer.
Will soon see if one less adult makes a difference, as we're moving to a new place over the weekend. Will report back in about 3 months Danni lol!
WOW! These bills really vary don't they......
Our house is about 2 years old, 3 bdrooms, 2 lounges, about 17 sq. We had a six star energy rating on it when we built it with simonds.
We pay about $250-$300 for our gas bill during winter, but the majority of that is for our ducted heating, and because we have SOLAR hot water, our gas bill over summer is $20.....I am serious!! That is for a quarter!
Our electricity bill is just on the $220 mark during winter, and around $300 during summer, which I think is fantastic because we run our ducted evap cooling 24/7 over summer (especially this summer just gone.....being pregnant in 45deg was not pleasant!!)
I easi pay our gas and electricity.
Our Gas is $25 a fortnight and electricity is $22 a fortnight. It is direct debited, so i never even notice it!
Our water bill is about $150, which is pretty good, but then we are basically only allowed to water the garden twice a week! we only water in summer.
During summer our elec bill is around $600. But we have our air cons on all night, and we have a pool, plus the split system air con going during the day. During winter it's around $200. We have gas cooktop and water and that's around $200 a quarter.
i have just realised we havent received a bill yet.. we moved in here in December. i set up a bill smoothing thingy, $42 a fortnight, but we still havent got the bill yet... might have to give them a call!
For those of you not receiving a bill, are you with TruEnergy?
If so, they have major issues with their I.T meter reading interpretation system. I have been hounding them for almost 1 year now as I still haven't recieved a bill (very annoying and I have, as a result, changed providers).
Apparently it should be sorted by end July this year...but then again, they told me last year that it would be by the end of '08 and early this year they said it would be sorted by April. I have now been told July is the lucky month, so it really is anyone's guess. They also change their stories everytime I call...it is really bad that nobody knows what is going on!
If I were you, I would honestly consider changing providers...
Hope this helps prevent you getting one hefty bill when they do decide to get their act together x
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..
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.
Westy: Thats what we think but this bill we got was a shock.. Especially as we are trying to save for our holiday lol..
Hope your spa is heated.. Enjoy it
Nic...awesome where are you holidaying too?
Yes the spa is heated and we try and use it as much as possible....it's great after a stressful day too!
The moral of this story seems to be to not own a fish/reptile tank that requires electricity if you are on a tight budget!
But geeeeeze some of you seem to have high bills!!! :o
Our bills average 90 days as well. In Summer they average around $170 - $200 per bill. In winter they average $350 - $400.
We are a family of 5. I am a SAHM with children at home a lot of the time... toddler at home all the time. We live in a large older style home. We only have 1 medium sized fridge. A small TV and minimal electrical gadgetry. Although my 14yo uses her hair-dryer daily. We use the tumble drier sparingly. We have a dishwasher that is used once a day. A washing machine used twice a day. 1 desktop computer is kept on for most of the day. We only have 1 room (the main living area) that has halogen down lights... the rest of the house just has 1 over head globe per room and most rooms also have a lower wattage lamp (40watts) that is used in preference to the over head light).
I think we could further reduce our bills... probably could get it down to about $150 per quarter if we put our minds to it.... I would LOVE a "Smart Meter". One of those electricity meters that gives you all these stats on your usage... can tell you which appliances are costing you the most etc.
We are off to the NT for 5 weeks.. We have some time in QLd but most of it is NT.. We did the trip in 06 and loved it so we are going back.. Only difference this time is that we are going to Ayres Rock as well:
Bath: When it was just me and DH our 90 day bill was less then $100 :lol: Its like we added $100 per child.. Ac and Driers are our biggest thing.. but cooler wweather means no more Ac except when Simon is sleeping after night shift and well I have no excuse now not to hang clothes on the line. I was just finding it hard to keep up with the washing but now Livi can run around I take her with me..
Our last 3 elec bills have been between $200-$210. That's for a small house with 2 people. That's with me home everyday, the air con going over summer and the LCD TV on all the time.
We use very few over head lights. At night, it's normally just the lamp on, and if a room is empty, the light is off. Our winter bill doesn't change that much, it may even come down a bit. We don't use our ducted heating, just the wood heater to heat the house (so we have to pay for wood) and our hot water service is one of those continuous systems that heats as you use it so it's not being heated constantly wasting electricity.