How much electricity do you use?

So the local energy company just "updated" the electricity meters on my apartment complex, and my electricity bill went up by about 45%. In previous months, I had been using around 650kWh per bimonthly period with around 12 kWh/day. Now it's somehow up to 950 kWh which is about 15.5kWh/day. Now, I don't run the AC or heat, and between my roommate and myself, we have I guess two computers that run 18 hours of the day or so. Our total bill was $100 a month. Over the summer, while running an ancient window AC unit with a shitty old refrigerator in Pittsburgh for a similar sized apartment I was paying $40 a month.

So, I'm curious, how much energy do you guys use? Am I totally getting fucked over by my city?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

it does certainly seem that you are getting fucked over, is the price for the kWh the same in that other place you lived in? or that "update" was actually the price of the KWh that was raised, those meters should be carefully tested before being placed in any complex(nothing less than perfect and the person responsible would most surely get fired)

To answer the question in my house it's about 600KWh a month that's about 20KWh per day, usually it's the bill in US $ ends up being around 50 including taxes and for us power bill includes garbage too. So that price for me seems a bit outlandish, but after all I live in a completely different country. To boot power electrical engineers(students or graduates) usually don't pay for those bills and well currently 3 live in the same household.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

They probably placed a wifi readout box at your place. Classic meters were read by visual inspection, which can be difficult if it's located in a fenced in backyard.

In these cases, sometimes they just don't bother checking it and simply estimate based on previous years' usage of the residence approximately how much current is being used.
That's what they did at my Grandma's house in Vegas, and those estimates could've been from data 10 years old for all I know, but I don't know how it affected her bill.

I think I use 4.5 kw a day at my house with my wife. I try to conserve as much as possible, and my computer probably only runs 16 hours a day. I always use the standby when away, though.

We have natural gas for heat, though, which is like 100 dollar or more a month in the winter. 150 at peak. Now that Summer is coming, the A/C will be electric, but I don't think it'll be as bad, here in the Intermountain area, we have some of the cheapest electric in the country. My bills are only 24 bucks a month.
I'll update later how much my kw cost is.

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Juan, electricity is more expensive here, but what bothers me is how I've lived here for five months and my bill was roughly constant. Then it just suddenly jumped this past month.

Zeph, 4.5 is still considerably lower than what I had had before; but I don't understand how I could be using 15 kW/day. No AC, no heat, two computers that run ~12 hours a day, and high efficiency light bulbs. It's a relatively new refrigerator, and I can't believe cooking uses that much electricity.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I never look at how much electricity we use. When I pay the bill, it's around $50-$60. While we've replaced all our bulbs with those fancy new ones, I still leave at least one light on for the cats. I know cats can see without, but I want them to feel comfort even if we're out. I don't mind paying a little extra in that case. (Maybe it's just for MY comfort) I was taught to shut the lights when I am done, but to leave at least one light on to give potential burglars a hint that we're home. It's an old habit which is hard to break, since this neighborhood seems to be as safe as it gets.

Of course, that seems ineffective as someone broke into my father's house while I was sitting right there, listening to music and singing with the lights on, all alone in the house. Fun times.

We don't have to pay our heat bills here, as management does that for us (thank goodness). Due to past experiences in ancient three-deckers of Worcester which had HORRIBLE drafts, I keep the heat to a bare minimum in the winter. When I was living in that drafty old house with my Jewish Princess roommate, she would jack the heat to ~80F, and the bill was never short of $400/month in the winter. I learned to conserve there.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'm on one of those budget billing plans where you pay the same amount every month (based on your average consumption). My monthly payment for gas and electric now is $100; it's gone up and down, but that's about average. Electricity prices in Maryland have skyrocketed since deregulation ended a few years ago, but $100 isn't too bad. I live in a one bedroom apartment, and I'm careful to turn out lights and not run the air/heat more than I need to. The only problem is that the balcony in the living room isn't sealed very well, and hot/cold air seeps in very easily.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

The bill for my apartment runs roughly $40-50 a month. No big spike since I've moved here which I am happy about.

FELIPE NO

Me and my roommate average about $80-100 a month in electricity, most of it probably due to the fact that she is really sensitive to cold, and therefore cranks up the heat when it gets anywhere near the 60s. We aren't home most of the day, and both of us just have laptops, so that's the only reason I can think of for why our electricity is that high.

My parents pay about the same to heat/cool an entire house, mind.
The difference is, they turn off the A/C or heat when they leave the house, and turn it back on when they get home. My roommate basically refuses to do that.

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Electricity prices here are about to jump by about 20% for the second time in as many years. Increased supply problems and the fact that any idea of competition introduced by denationalising energy supply back in the day is laughable due to the collaberative nature of the energy companies mean that energy bills are getting as silly as petrol prices here.

Generally though, I think we're pretty good at conserving electricity in our house. We make a point of turning things off properly rather than leaving them on standby (Which might as well be leaving them on, the amount of energy used), like most houses in the UK we don't have air conditioning (We open a window when it gets hot), we use energy saving lightbulbs throughout the house, our water heating is an on-demand system rather than keeping the water hot needlessly all day and it's a well insulated house so we rarely had the heating on over winter.

The one thing we're bad with is running the washing machine and dryer. We seem to get through a lot of clothes between the three of us but at least we use the economy cycle and with summer just around the corner we can start drying things outside rather than using the dryer so much. My housemate does have a fair bit of computer equipment on during the day too but he's a web designer (Or something, I dunno, it involves computers)so that's fair enough and the energy he uses like that is offset by the fact he works from home and doesn't burn energy commuting to work.

I think you'll have to accept that energy prices are going to keep rising though and pretty fast with it. It's not just supply fears, it's likely that any form of "Green" fiscal policy will involve taxing the shit out of energy in an attempt to make people use less of it, like with petrol (Here at least).

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by nuttyturnip

I'm on one of those budget billing plans where you pay the same amount every month (based on your average consumption). My monthly payment for gas and electric now is $100; it's gone up and down, but that's about average. Electricity prices in Maryland have skyrocketed since deregulation ended a few years ago, but $100 isn't too bad. I live in a one bedroom apartment, and I'm careful to turn out lights and not run the air/heat more than I need to. The only problem is that the balcony in the living room isn't sealed very well, and hot/cold air seeps in very easily.

That is fucking outrageous.

My kwH costs 5.6 cents a unit. I use roughly 12 per day. Probably 18 when Summer hits. My last bill was 24 dollars, and only 19 of it was actual usage charges. I say, we have a pretty good system out here in Idaho.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well, for the month of April I consumed 404 kwH and ended up with a bill of $40.18. Somehow in January I used 705 kwH...must have been cold.

How ya doing, buddy?

Blimey. I just did a quick Google search and it seems the average American household uses 8,900kw/h of electricity a year whereas in Britain it's more like 4,900kw/h. You guys are pretty wasteful huh?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Yeah, I'm not terribly "green" with my power consumption myself, though I'd like to be. My primary computer is a quad-core Power Mac G5, which eats electricity like it was going out of style (apparently 120W idle to an Athlon's 35...yeah). I try not to leave lights on and such, though, and turn off TVs, speakers, monitors, etc. whenever I can.

But yeah, I make Greenpeace people commit suicide.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Our house has 6 people, and during summer last year the electricity bill was about $30+ but when it came to winter the bill racks up to almost $70 (!!!)...the reason being one of our housemate is being incredibly selfish by turning off the central heater whenever he deems warm enough in his room without thinking of the rest of us, and another housemate is really sensitive to the cold weather and turns on her own portable heater in her room. So you can imagine how expensive the bill might be!

On second thought, electricity bills in summer might be expensive as well cause everyone turns on their own portable air-cond in their rooms...

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I'm lucky enough to live in an area (SF) where climate control is almost completely unnecessary, so my power consumption usually runs about $25-30.

FELIPE NO

Well, after moving into a similar sized apartment with a less efficient oven and keeping the same lifestyle, my electricity is down to 4.32kWh/day.

So, yeah, go my old apartment complex with most likely the least efficient refrigerator ever.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I've always been cautious with my electricity (since before the recent trend). Most of my stuff is power saving units. When I'm not at home/I sleep, nothing is on but my fridge. Absolutely nothing is on standby. Also I'm buying green energy.

In 2008 I used 807kw/h total.

Jeez I sound like such a dick.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

We're constantly laughing at how absurdly low our electricity bill here is in Tokyo, we live in a tiny apartment but it's like $19US a month.

In Australia it was horrendous. We lived in a slightly larger apartment (but still not giant by any means) and had to take $120 a month electricity bills. We were pretty sure there was something horribly wrong with the meter, but once they sent somebody out to look at it who opened the lid and said "yeah this is fine" and walked away without doing anything other than glancing at it.

If you compound the hilariously high bills with the fact they'd jack the kwh rates up significantly in winter when you desperately needed more for stuff like heating and you'd realise they were on to a pretty good scam.

Do other countries change their rates seasonally? Their justification seemed pretty awful to me.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

The electricity company here gives you the option to be billed at different rates during the day. If you use during peak hours they'll charge more, and if you use it during the night they'll charge less. The idea is to decrease demand during peak hours so they don't have to use less efficient generating methods and don't have to deal with rolling brownouts and whatnot.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by IdleChill

Well, for the month of April I consumed 404 kwH and ended up with a bill of $40.18. Somehow in January I used 705 kwH...must have been cold.

I wish I were still paying this. I've moved into a 2br/1.5ba duplex and the central unit cannot keep up with the heatwave we've been having. I think we had two weeks of 97 degrees plus. The thing ran all the time. Last month I used 1771 kWh of power for a whopping $148.05. I haven't paid less than $100 since I moved in here. Last August and September, my bill was over $200 both months. Damn Louisiana heat and humidity.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I used 106kWh in June, and 168kWh in May. I have no idea why there's such a difference, but I guess that's about what I use per month during the summers. It goes up radically during colder months (it doubles), because I have shitty electric radiators.

I live alone in a 63m^2 apartment. Computer, peripherals and audio system runs at all time when I'm not at work or sleeping.

I was speaking idiomatically.

My husband and I together use about 300kWh per month. He's an energy conservation nut. But we're also not home much before 10pm. And we sleep by 12am.

All we got running 24/7 are small things like clocks, microwave, fridge, night light and a server and the things we have plugged which are on low power mode standby.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Since last year, we've installed these remote control plug things that means we can switch off all the plug sockets in a given room using a remote that we leave by the front door. This means that the last person out simply hits the button and everything like stereos and tvs and computers and phone chargers left plugged in gets properly turned off, rather than sitting on standby. It's saving about a tenner a month apparently which for an initial cost of about £30 isn't bad at all.

FELIPE NO

At school, my 3 roommates and I average around 180 kWh per month, so we pay ~$23. Our heater runs on gas, and we don't have/need an air conditioner, so winter is the only time our PG&E bill isn't around $45. None of us have a desktop computer, so we only have the appliances and TVs plugged in all the time, which probably helps keep the usage down.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

For reasons completely unknown to me, my electricity reading for the month of June has risen from 365kwH in May to a whopping 498kwH. And I didn't change anything at all. No new appliances, no new habits, no nothing o.O

For that amount, I am charged S$90.85 plus 7% tax, for a total of S$97.21 (or roughly $70).

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