[Debbie]

Well our June bill came in, we have combined gas and electric.
Our bill was up by $100 this month.
This is from extra lights, more cooking hot meals, 2 plug in oil rads running 2hrs each a night and using the clothes dryer apx 5 times.

We have a large shed of a house with no insulation at all but we agreed to live with it for a yr whilst we planned what building works we wanted done, rather than insulating areas then having to take it all out when we did our modifications.

We heat the lounge with a wood burner. Paid $300 for wood at the beginning of winter and should have plenty to see us through. (Plus our gum tree blow down in the storm so no wood to buy next yr for us, everything has a silver lining)
Debbie

[Rabbit]

My guess is that a Kwh of gas in NZ is about 11.71c minimum (I do not have a bill to hand).

In the UK, say 2.76 pence? - according to the DTI website. so at an exchange rate of 2.60 to the UK pound, so say - 7.18c

Ballpark 60+% more per Kwh in NZ, throw in some poor insulation, a few southerly winds and what do you get?

A very large bill.....:wah

I will leave it to someone else to check the working / math or compare electricity prices

Rabbit

[KerryS]

According to my gas bill - it costs 6.11 cents per KW/h for gas plus 90 cents daily charge, which is reduced to 5.499 cents KW/h plus 67.5 cents per day charge with prompt payment.

My power costs are 33.33 cents per day plus 17.80 cents per KW/h. This gets a 10% promt payment discount so I end up paying 29.997 cents a day plus 16.02 cents per KW/h.

This is with Mercury, which isn't the cheapest provider, but I couldn't be bothered with separate bills and they are one of only two providers in my area who can do both gas and electric on one bill.

But, I'm a tree-hugging hippy at heart and my power bills are really low. Last winter they averaged about $90 a month in a 3 bed villa for 2 of us with an occasional 3rd person. In summer the bills were less than $60 a month. If you work it out, most of that is actually in daily charges, rather than consumption.
I do spend a lot of time not at home - my friend's bar is far warmer than my house!

[Lupin]

Mine's about $170 pcm. We occasionally use a low watt fin heater in one bedroom overnight if it's very cold. Other than that it's electric cooking, lighting and electric water heating (the principle culprit I suspect). So far we have spent about $400 on wood and will likely need another $200 load to get through to warmer weather. Someone is home almost all the time and atm we have the burner lit almost 24/7 because it needs it to keep the chill off the house. We are in a 3 bed villa on piles without any underfloor or wall insulation (not sure about roof), southerly facing and surrounded by trees.

Roll on our new home :)

[Rabbit]

NZ Gas Cost data http://www.med.govt.nz/upload/35306/20060301.pdf

UK Gas Cost data http://www.dtistats.net/energystats/qep233.xls

NZ Elect Cost data http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/MultipageDocumentPage____27085.aspx

UK Elect Cost data http://www.dtistats.net/energystats/qep223.xls

A super computer is available here: http://stats.oecd.org/wbos/

The above prices are normalised on 2006 though up-to-date data is on the OECD site.

[jen]

We just got our first non-estimated combined gas/electric bill for our house. $250 for the last month. That's at 16.48 kw/hr electric and 6.9 kw/hr gas through Contact, though those rates are actually a bit lower since we get 'prompt payment' and 'dual energy' discounts. We have gas central heating and gas oven, electric water heating. 120 sq meter house, two people.

We turn the heat on for an hour in the morning to get the place up to 16 and turn it on around 5:30 until 10 or 11 pm also at 16. It's been so cold the last couple weeks that without the heat the house is around 12 so I wear heavy jumpers and sometimes a jacket when I'm home during the day. I actually don't know how cold it gets in here overnight since we have the thermostat set to turn the heat on before we get up & I haven't thought to look at it when I streak by at lightspeed on my way to/from the bathroom.

I was worried that keeping the central heat on more often would cost a fortune & I guess I had cause to worry, though I'm shocked at how much they charge in daily fees before you even start on your actual usage :wah

Jen

[martinp]

I was once told that NZ'ers are a tough bunch and who needs heat in a house.

Well I'm not tough and I find it amazing that it costs so much to keep even mildly comfortable. We live in the so called Winterless North, I hate to think what it's like in the Summerless South.

[Rabbit]

We just got our first non-estimated combined gas/electric bill for our house. $250 for the last month. That's at 16.48 kw/hr electric and 6.9 kw/hr gas through Contact,
Jen

The bad news, received a gas bill today for $526.62 dollars for 28 days Gas supply and $145.75 for electric.

Rang contact energy, who suggested I might have a leak.

The good news, having read the info supplied by Jen, I noticed on the bill that they had put us on the Gas Living Smart (low user) rate at 10.296 per KWh excluding GST. – Not very smart!

Our electricity rate is $18.493 ex GST on anytime, our main usage is morning, evening and weekends – should we switch this also?

Rang contact energy again to ask why are we on this expensive gas plan, and they could not explain – they have offered to investigate.

To everyone out there, I would suggest, get out the last bill and make sure you are on the most efficient price plan for your Gas and Electricity.

Jan, once again, thanks for providing the insight.

Rabbit

[jess]

To everyone out there, I would suggest, get out the last bill and make sure you are on the most efficient price plan for your Gas and Electricity. I'll second that. We were not on the best plan with Contact Energy either. (And they don't put the plan name on the bill, so we had to call and find out in order to figure out the best prices/plan for us at consumer.org.nz's power switch site (http://www.consumer.org.nz/powerswitch/default.asp?bhcp=1). Apparently we could save $186 a year on electric by switching to Meridian, so I need to get on that.)

The two of us use a woodstove and an electric blanket. Electric hot water heating. Occasionally run a portable heater for an hour or two. Only dry clothes on the line. Our electric bill for June was $134 (that's with the 10% off for prompt payment). We bought 5 cubic meters of wood for $430 in March. We've used about a third of it so far.

Also, our electric is delivered by a trust, which gave us a rebate check of over $200 a while back, so that took a chunk out of our winter heating costs!.