Post your Power Usage

[bulbous]

I live alone in a mostly dark 'granny-flat', this is why I cannot understand the (for me) high 'leckie usage. Previous place was a four bedroom house with a workshop/welder/power tools etc. Now with bits amputated I do bugger-all, just internet and a bit of TV.

[Bluedog]

We are off grid, but our costs for cooking, heating and hot water involve the gathering of firewood to put into the woodstove which also heats the hot water tank in the roof and its an oven too.

As wood gathering involves using a chainsaw and ute there is a reasonable cost involved. we live in a forest and it produces more available wood than we can use so its well and truly sutainable.

Every 6 months we go through a gas cylinder which runs the stove rangetop and a gas powered beer fridge outside.

For pv we have a 1.4kw array@24 volts 1500ah feeding the inverter to run the house, all the usual stuff , austar, widescreen tv , sat internet, laptops etc

The ham radio gear and refrigeration run off a separate 12 volt circuit with 800 watts of panels and 1400 ah of batteries.
The system has been great and is often in float by lunchtime.

What we dont have : airconditioning, plasma tv, full sized computers on all the time, oodles of wastefull downlights spattered all over the ceiling of every room.

Its compact flouros all round, 25 watter in the kitchen, 15 and 20's elsewhere
cheers

[Godzilla]

Mrs just told me we pay $220 to $250 per 1/4 in summer, a little higher in winter when the ducted heaters on in my 3 bedroom house.

We dont run our plasma much as were down the back of the house with the crt tv, we have energy saver lights through the whole house but i have a sat receiver and 1 pc on all the time for CCTV.

I love watching telly and being on line while sitting in the dark.

Cant complain, not too bad comparing to others.

[Joey]

I don't think a lot of people realize how easy it is to calculate you own usage and see what really make the difference.

EG: power in WA is 12.67 cents per Unit , I KWH is 1 unit or 1000WH

So if you have a 100 W light globe running for 10 hours it would cost you one unit 12.67cents

If you run your fairly standard Reverse Air Con 3.2 KW for the same time it would cost you 10 x 3.2 x 12.67cents = $4.05 per 10 hours.
If you run it for the same time summer and winter it would cost you about $365.00 per Quarter.

An Ordinary 42" plasma draw around 800w running ( I say running because they also draw upwards of 160W in standby )
Average TV on time in Au per household is 6 hours so that's 4800WH per day , per quater just to run a 42" plasma $54.73 cents , of course more if you live in SA , Vic .

It's not hard to see where people are getting these big bills from , not forgetting Electric hot water , electric stoves / Ovens , Microwaves also use heaps! , Pools pumps , fan heaters just to name some of the heavy hitters.

For some reason we see this great push to fit compact lighting that in reality only account for about 2% of most peoples bills .

So far only a couple of replies have reported usage even close to Australia's average consumption of 16KWH per day , I think these figures must be Pre the big plasma and split Air Con push .

Bluedog's setup in the envy of many ,hats off to you mate .

[Globe]

Thanks for raising the issue of power bills Joey.

Our average daily use is 17KWH/day(early April bill), up from 16KWH from the previous. (I'm not counting the 2 latest bills as there were 2 substantial meter reading errors.) There are 2 of us in a largish 3 bedroom unit in Brisbane's inner northern suburbs. Both of us work and everything (except fridge and chest freezer) is turned off at the wall when we leave for work every day, also usually everything is turned off when we head off to bed.

We have a large wall mounted Mitsubishi reverse cycle AC which heats and cools the whole unit pretty quickly, our hot water unit is a small one (Im guessing but I'd say 100 litres under the kitchen sink) and is not on off peak. Compact Fluros have replaced most of the lighting. We have a 68cm CRT TV on for 5-6 hours per day during the week, a little longer most weekends. The AC is really only used when the conditions are uncomfortably hot or cold.

I would say we are pretty careful with our power usage, not really using more than necessary to go about our daily lives. Bills over the last 12 months or so have crept from $240.00 per quarter up to $270.00 without increasing our daily usage.

[angel]

We always averaged around $440 a quarter, since putting in solar hot water, i'm down to $320 a quarter. We run all the usual gadgets, plasma, pool, 4 computers etc.
We put energy saver globes in all rooms, and we don't own a heater, only use the air con if necessary, but in reality, no matter what we do, prices will only go up.

[rob916]

i am seriously thinking about running my entire lighting system on a solar system. solar panel, batteries, 12v low power lighting.......would reduce costs greatly I calculate??

just use led lighting.
Normal globe 60w
LED 2 watts( equivalent to about 30 watts ). Run 10 it doesn't matter.

[SPLog]

Interesting on the cost as it has gone up here in SE Qld, From my last bill
New charges Peak $0.14810 - Off Peak $0.06040
Old charges Peak $0.14050 - Off Peak $0.05730

[Globe]

Interesting on the cost as it has gone up here in SE Qld, From my last bill
New charges Peak $0.14810 - Off Peak $0.06040
Old charges Peak $0.14050 - Off Peak $0.05730

Yeah I remember seeing that on my latest bill, but at the time I was more worried that they screwed up the meter reading again and billed me $500 more than last time.

Idiots.

[SPLog]

They probably did screw up as I had a letter stating that they have overcharged me and the amount is between one cent and $5.00 WTF.

[xnavyman]

Further to my earlier post. My 127cm plasma runs from about 5-30am till 11pm. The heat pump is usually set on heating this time of year and set to 20 degrees so it stops and starts as necessary. I have two computers that are running about 14hrs a day. The grandkidlets have their own tvs, dvd players and games consoles. Nearly all lighting is the friendly globes. We use the dryer a lot during winter and the hws is 160lt electric. All up about $7/day and will drop signifently as the weather warms up.

[z80]

Compact fluoros must be the biggest consumer con of the century.

They contribute stuff all to power saving and contribute massively to wallet shrinkage.

The stupid things don't last as long as claimed that's for sure..

[Uncle Fester]

$450/quarter. Usually 6ppl in the house, pool, projector, 2-3PCs and game consoles are constantly running and no gas.

In any event the underlying problem is overpopulation, not consumption.

That was the funniest thing I heard today.
Australia doesn't have(or uses too much) energy because it is over populated....

[Bluedog]

compact fluoros are a cheap way to light up a room, no doubt about it.
compared to half a dozen 100 watt 12volt halogen downlights, or 4 120watt in-roof 240v downlights.
with a white painted ceiling and no reflector (stark - cfl sticking out of the fitting) they arent pretty but work at my place.

as for the huge crock of $#i! people were told about how much a huge saving they would have by replacing incandescent bulbs with cfl's and even having people going around neighbourhoods house to house pulling 100 watt bulbs and fitting already-obsolete old stock 15 watters in their place..... then having the hide to make the householder sign away the carbon credit rights for the next 20 years or so, its tantamount to fraud.

first thing several households i know of who got sucked in by this crap was to pull the 15 watters and fit 25's. what really anoyed some families was that it was so dark in their place , but the installers had nicked all the old bulbs!

z80 is right on the money there

cheers

[lee]

Compact fluoros must be the biggest consumer con of the century.

They contribute stuff all to power saving and contribute massively to wallet shrinkage.

The stupid things don't last as long as claimed that's for sure..

I have a 5w CFL in the hall as a night light for the kids
i worked it out that it was actually cheaper overall to just use a 25w incandescant globe than the cost of replacing the cfl every time it blew (well before the rated hours were up)

We pay about $730 per quarter (work from home)
probably the 2-4 pc's that run 24-7 dont help.

the best value for money lighting has to be 3' fluros, although they look crap on the ceiling

[MaXiLeeCH]

Our average quarterly electricity bill is about $150.00 to $180.00 all year round.
We have no A/C, No heaters, no plasma and none of those crappy CF globes that last a 1/4 of the time of proper globes.
We do have 4 computers that run 24/7, an electric stove, a 180 litre electric HWS and 6 ceiling fans that run 24/7 in summer.
We have no insulation to speak of in the roof of the house.
(It's not needed, the house is always cool, due to decent design of window openings etc to catch the breezes)
Most of our power usage is the computers and most of any meat that we cook is done on a gas fired BBQ.

[lee]

@MaXi, no big amps either it seems, maybe just an 817?

[z80]

That was the funniest thing I heard today.
Australia doesn't have(or uses too much) energy because it is over populated

Yes it does...

Every summer when the power station can't keep up with demand is an example of ever increasing consumption, in part due to more consumers.



So, to me, it is your retort that is the funniest post I have read all week.

[BillyGoat]

So, to me, it is your retort that is the funniest post I have read all week.

Just wait, Hamguy2 will be along in a minute.

[Uncle Fester]

Z80, I am laughing because Australia has a population density of 2.6/km^2 compared to lets say Germany with 232/km^2.

On the population density chart, Australia ranks at place 235 with Greenland last at 241.

I am pleased to inform you that we have a birth rate of 1.79 so your only problem should be only the immigration rate that is increasing our population by around 1% a year.

We have so much coal, natural gas, uranium, sunshine, wind, coastline for tidal generators, etc in Australia that we could supply even China with their energy needs.

Surely you can't be serious that it is a population problem... OK you said partly, but that can only be a very insignificant part.
I do know some smaller costal towns have suddenly gained population from the metros and now have problems with power and water.

Might be more a problem with the infrastructure, with too many ppl working behind office desks and not enough working on the actual power generation/distribution.

However you should definitely have a look at what the average household consumes today compared to 10 years (or even 5) ago, with everybody wanting a decent sized LCD/plasma rated anything between 200W and 800W, practically every house has one PC (often more), 200W game consoles, all the STBs and everybody around me is seeming to have an air conditioner installed lately.
These are all items that usually run longer on a daily base than a light bulb.

That is also why CFLs do not significantly reduce your power bill.
Especially when we have summer time most lamps are only switched on for 1-2 hours an evening. So a lamp that saves 50W of power might save you $0.50 a month.

I use dimmers with incandescent bulbs in crystal lamps or reflector lamps for indirect lighting. A 40W bulb might be consuming 10W and give me an ambiance I can never achieve with CFLs.