Outrageous Electricity rise

[Colin_Fraser]

Originally Posted by jenchris

My service fee ATM is 26 cents a day - which is tolerable
I use 12.55Kw/H per day at 21cents.
I use gas for cooking and electricity for water heating (I'm a POM so that is a small charge lol)
Nearly all my lights are LED or miniflouro.

Thats 1154kWh in 92 days
My home is electric cooking and solar/electric hws & I have a wood heater

[clive milne]

fwiw)
In Denmark you pay around 40c / kWh
Germany 34c
Spain 27c
Ireland 29c
Italy 29c
Sweden 27c
Belgium 29c
Brazil 34c
Guyana 27c
Netherlands 30c
Portugal 25c
Philippines 31c
Tonga 58c / kWh...

Feel better now?

[Stardrifter_WA]

I can't be bothered with solar, a little too "iffy" in my opinion, not enough efficiency in the panels, yet. Much more efficient panels are under development though. Solar is reliant on Government subsidies, and we all know where that will lead.....to zero subsidies and will just end up as a 1:1 ratio, so no actual cost/benefit. It has already cost Governments $550 million, I believe.

What about maintenance and efficiency drop off over the lifespan of the panels? This will happen over time, particular, if a single panel in the system fails and reduces efficiency in the system as a whole. Also, I understand that there is an obligation, on the householders part, to maintain efficiency of the system, otherwise, you may find that the engergy company could cancel any contract. I also believe that the contract is not necessarily transferable to a new owner, so there may be no real added value to the property in having a system installed, which is why I originally thought about installing a system. Apparently, it is all in the fine print.

However, for those that have gone down this road, producing extra power is only half the equation anyway, as reducing the "need' for energy is the other half of the equation, which is the way I am going.

I am changing "all" my house lights to LED's, which are very energy efficient, and replacing appliances with more energy efficient devices (most are due for replacement anyway), which will considerably lower my use of energy.

In addition to that I am changing my habits in the way I use (waist) energy. For instance, if there is nothing on television, instead of just sitting up and watching trash (which is what's on most of the time, or it's repeats), and leaving the heater on (wasting gas), I go curl up in my nice warm bed with a good book, at least, in winter. Got lots of astronomy books to get through anyway. Also, I no longer leave all the lights on, if I am not in the room, which I had a bad habit of doing. Furthermore, I leave nothing on standby and switch everything off at the wall.

So, having a solar system is only half the answer to reducing costs. Reducing the amount of energy used is just as important.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Clive

fwiw)
In Denmark you pay around 40c / kWh
Germany 34c.......

All well and good, but its only part of the equation.
What are the other "ongoing" costs in those places????
Ie, Looking at my last bill ( and i'm not a high volume user )
my peak rate was about 22.5C/kwh
but 1/3 of my bill is still supply charges ( ~90c per day incl gst )
When you ammortise that into the rates, it changes the results.
What would be really good is if we could get a true comparison
of how much it costs, "as a total cost including overheads"
for a roughly standard usage of a set amount of electricity.

Andrew

Also, after living in Nth Germany for a year, i gotta say,
the requirement for electricity was a lot less than here.
No real need for aircon in summer, and in winter, most heating came from hot water piped through a city wide network of pipes
from power stations/incinerators.

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

I pay 23.3 cents per kilowatt hour overall including GST and supply charges. That figure is for this last quarter.
That's $2.92 a day (also this is my highest quarter (the other quarters are about 10% less usage))

[Exfso (Peter)]

It certainly appears as though Queensland is very much cheaper per Kwh than SA, by a long shot. As I said we are hit with 27.158c/kwh for the 1st 1200kwh/yr then it climbs to 27.665c/kwh for the next 2800kwh/yr and up to 31.67c/kwh for the next 10000kwh/yr, on top of that is a $60 supply charge per quarter. As stated previously these are winter rates and in summer they are around 10% higher. As of the 1st of July one can add around 20% to these numbers followed by the carbon tax % on top of that. Not hard to see why SA is the most expensive electricity in the world.

[Allan_L (Allan)]

I am in NSW:
My current Smart Meter rates:
Off Peak (10pm to 7am) = 10.56c
Shoulders = 18.04c
Peak (2pm to 8pm) = 44.66c
System availability Charge 59c/day = $56 this quarter
(and these rates will go up next week)

Current usage 1703kWh this quarter (no kids at home)

For the Same qtr in 1996 (one rate 10.15c) consumed 3395kWh (3 kids at home)

Oddly enough, Same dollar amount for both bills.

[supernova1965 (Warren)]

I know this thread is about Power bills but our last phone bill is $95 for line rental and only $75 for phone calls GO FIGURE it costs us more to have the phone than it costs in calls we make

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

I seldom use the phone too, and my bill is 75% line rental.
My last top up for $20 on my mobile - expired after a year.

[TrevorW]

Thats the ludicrous thing it costs me $115 a month for mobile/home/internet access

This is another area we are being ripped off IMO compared to some countries