[mish&al]

Hi all,

I have a question my hubby wants me to ask about the cost of power bills, I hope it itsn't too much trouble.

He wants to know what the average cost would be a year for electricity, or per month on average summer and winter.

I know it's difficult to estimate, as everyone has different heating in their homes, but here we have a ducted reverse air conditioning system which we hardly use in winter, and a gas heater in the loungeroom, but our heating needs would be very different in Sydney as opposed to Christchurch.

Thanks ahead, very much appreciated..

Mish :cheers

P.s. I feel sick and am getting very nervous, and it's not till december 2009...:wah

[James 1077]

Can't give you a summer reading but we've just had this month's bill through and it has doubled from the $250 last month to nearly $500!

mother coming over from a middle-eastern summer so keeping her electric blanket on all night and the heater going full blast all the time.

[Milliemoo]

And just to give the other end of the spectrum..... ours averages about $80/$85 year round. Last year it averaged $75/$80.

Of course it's impossible to estimate what your bills will be until you know:
* where you'll be living
* positioning of home
* style of home
* date of home
* how well (if at all) insulated it is
* type of windows
* type of heating (if any)
* whether you're a tight wad (like my OH) who never has the heating on

Milliemoo

[nippa&pippa]

Our is varied between $120 to $150 per month, last month was $130, did go up to $180 when MIL stayed over summer for 6 months, ouch!
We have used log burner as main form of heating and 2 oil-fin heater in children's room all night from 7-8pm till 7am.
Some of electricty is used for pump water up from bore well as well as getting rid of water as we are in rural areas. I am SAHM with two kids at home and another just started school, so we used electricity during day but rarely watch TV although.
Washing machine about 2-3 loads per day (I used cloth nappies for my baby, so wash them every 3 days)
HTH

[Familyofmonkeys]

Our combined electric/gas bill is around $250 per month during winter....that is with 2 halogen heaters on all night for kids, dishwasher, heavily used tumbledryer, washing machine...about 1-2 loads per day, lots of baking, computer, and dehumidifier on almost 24/7, and TV on several hours per day in winter. Summer our bills were more like $130 per month....that includes using treadmill several days per week.

I think our bills are actually pretty low, but we don't have a lot of electric gadgets, only heat the room we are using, the hot water only heats to ~50 degrees and our kids are small so they are far too your to have discovered playstations etc yet :)

[ourquest]

We are also waiting in anticipation of our first bill. With piped gas and a mysterious method for calculating the effective KWh gas usage we won't really know about the gas portion until we get a bill. As far as electricity usage, it's easy to know how much the bill will be as you can keep tabs on the actual Kwh used.

It's all about how much each appliance uses. Electric blankets aren't going to make a big difference (I think they run at about 50 watts) but it is the space heating and water heating which makes the big impact at 1000-2000 watts per unit. Electric towel rails are about 20w only, dryers are big users at about 1500w. I find it a great challenge to try and cut down usage as much as possible (obvious stuff like not leaving lights on etc) and it's clearly going to be something we do more and more into the future with looming energy crises.

One consumer site (I think its www.consumer.org.nz) has an interesting actual hourly running cost of typical appliances (If you know the wattage and the Kwh price you can also work this out yourself).

[Moorf]

Our leccy bills range from $90-$130 (depending if spa on) in the summer, and $200 - $400 in the winter (June/July usually worst months). We don't have a heat pump or central heating. We have a coal stove and open wood fire. We use approx 3 tons of coal in the stove during the five months of May - end September - costs $140/ton delivered. That also heats our water and often the kettle. We get through about 9m3 of wood in the open fire a year - all depends on what the weather is doing. We run leccy blankets when it's really cold and we have an oil heater on in the bedroom pretty much all the time (on thermostat). Towel rail also on all the time. Bathroom heater (fan) used only when showering/bathing.

As the others said - it all depends on so many variables, including if there is anyone home during the day (I am and I use PC and TV / stereo all day), the daylight your house gets to warm house, size of windows, height of ceilings, yada, yada, yada...

HTH
Moorf

[Moorf]

I find it a great challenge to try and cut down usage as much as possible (obvious stuff like not leaving lights on etc) and it's clearly going to be something we do more and more into the future with looming energy crises.

So true. We've been making a bit of a game of it as in the past we've been really lax about our energy use. In fact, it's scary how much we have been wasting looking back. We've changed all the lights we can in the house to the energy saving ones, and several of the outdoor lights (thanks to leccy lee's great advice!) and everything we can do using our coal and wood sources we do.

Compared to last year's bills we have definitely been making savings. It's great to see!


Out of interest, Mish, what are you paying over there in Sydney for electric bills?

[Familyofmonkeys]

Our combined electric/gas bill is around $250 per month during winter....that is with 2 halogen heaters on all night for kids, dishwasher, heavily used tumbledryer, washing machine...about 1-2 loads per day, lots of baking, computer, and dehumidifier on almost 24/7, and TV on several hours per day in winter. Summer our bills were more like $130 per month....that includes using treadmill several days per week.

I think our bills are actually pretty low, but we don't have a lot of electric gadgets, only heat the room we are using, the hot water only heats to ~50 degrees and our kids are small so they are far too your to have discovered playstations etc yet :)

Can eat my own words....just checked our last power bill and it was over $300....probably because we have had heater on during day...been at home more due to wet weather :wah

[benandclare]

$150 for last month.

This is up on our normal one due to MIL being here for 5 weeks and also Sam now here, so computer and play station on all day and 2 extra leccy blankets at night.
However our main heating is gas apart from 2 bathroom heaters and 2 5 fin Oil filled leccy ones. We're in 4 bedroom house with gas cooking .

[mish&al]

Thank you all, it gives me an idea at least. Obviously winter is worst, I found it cold in July, but only ever been in summer in between.

Moorf, our bills are sent to us 3 monthly, our electricity was about $280, but I think it will be about $300 for 3 months at the next round after winter. Our gas recently was $260 or $280 for 3 months.

We have a ducted system, but our bills are dearer in summer as we often get at least 35 to 38 degrees over dec/jan/feb, even in the 40's!

We use the gas heater more in winter, and put the girls electric blankets on at night and turn them off before bed. Our winters on average never go much below 14 degrees in the day, today is a sunny 16 or 18..:raebanana

Thank you again all, now after seeing the weather you are having in Canterbury, I am seriously freaking out!

Mish :cheers

[James 1077]

Heard that British Gas have raised gas prices in the UK by 35% - the largest ever rise (and on top of a 15% rise 6 months ago).

Ouch! And fingers crossed the same doesn't happen here with energy costs!

[Moorf]

Heard that British Gas have raised gas prices in the UK by 35% - the largest ever rise (and on top of a 15% rise 6 months ago).

Ouch! And fingers crossed the same doesn't happen here with energy costs!

And Centrica's raising power (elec) by 9% too, I hear, in the UK. ( updated http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=aDUIW4gU4VAM&refer=uk )

If it happens here.. we have trees and friends with big chainsaws :D

[aberdian]

Electric is averaging $400/m, gas is $200/m

House is 3 bed, electric cooker, gas fire and 3 oil fin rads (on 2hrs/day).

Extortionate.

[mish&al]

Electric is averaging $400/m, gas is $200/m

Crikey! :exit

Mish :wah

[melly]

So do people think the ENZ cost of living calculator amounts for Frugal, Modest and Good Living for the electricity/heating category are a good indication or not??? According to the calculator if you are:
frugal = $120/month
modest = $160/month
good living = $220/month

I also assume they are including the cost of firewood/coal/gas heating in this amount seeing as it is electricity + heating costs.

[Moorf]

Averaged over a year.. yes they are about right, at least in our case.

[melly]

I guess I will have to get used to a bigger difference in the size of my bills according to seasons than we have now. Our electricity bill is slightly more during the winter months as we use a little more hot water (everybody likes a longer shower in the colder months) and the lights are on a bit more with the sunlight hours being slightly less, but this only adds about $50 at most extra to the total 3month bill for winter.

[Moorf]

Definitely, and something we weren't prepared for either, even coming from the UK. In our situation here our winter bills can be 3 x our summer ones, a huge seasonal difference.

[andrewp]

Definitely, and something we weren't prepared for either, even coming from the UK. In our situation here our winter bills can be 3 x our summer ones, a huge seasonal difference.

Wow - that's huge. Do you guys have "blankets" around your water heaters? I know from some research I did on energy consumption that our water heater makes up about 40% of our electricity usage. Now if the same were to apply in NZ, I would have thought that would indicate poor insulation on the water heater. Just a thought.

[Moorf]

Our hot water is free during winter from the coal stove wetback. :) Plus, we had a new tank put in 2 yrs ago when we moved in as the existing one was a bit old.

We use very little elec in the summer - we're outdoors more so less TV/PC power, no heating at all on (during winter there's an oil rad on all the time on thermo) while in winter we use more power in the way of lighting, cooking (gas hob/elec oven) and tumble drying.

[andrewp]

Our hot water is free during winter from the coal stove wetback. :) Plus, we had a new tank put in 2 yrs ago when we moved in as the existing one was a bit old.

We use very little elec in the summer - we're outdoors more so less TV/PC power, no heating at all on (during winter there's an oil rad on all the time on thermo) while in winter we use more power in the way of lighting, cooking (gas hob/elec oven) and tumble drying.

Aha. Makes sense now. We have dry winters so never need a tumble drier in winter because washing dries fine on the line. Something else to get used to.

[Moorf]

I really should dry outside more in the winter months, it is possible especially with the crisp winter days. I've only started hanging washing out since I moved to NZ :o (I can admit that since finding out via this forum that I'm not alone!).

Mind you, dryer been used quite alot in the recent weather!!

[aberdian]

Aha. Makes sense now. We have dry winters so never need a tumble drier in winter because washing dries fine on the line. Something else to get used to.
I dread to think what ours would be like with a tumble dryer.

As to the calculator, to average $220/m, in summer we'd never have a light on or cook! Maybe the calculator is good for the more northerly spots, just not here :)

[Mrs Pony]

We've changed all the lights we can in the house to the energy saving ones, and several of the outdoor lights

Have you seen a difference with those yet? We replaced ALL of ours here and I haven't really seen a difference...


I don't know if I'll be able to survive with out a washer, dryer or dishwasher...

[nippa&pippa]

Our water also heat by logburner and our logburner is on the go 24/7.

We haven't got tumble dryer (yet) but hasn't been problem with drying our washing till this week. We have huge undercover areas around the house to dry our washing without getting wet during raining days till now with ongoing wet weather the air is too damp to be effective so the washing is on hold till weather pick up :wah

[melly]

Have you seen a difference with those yet? We replaced ALL of ours here and I haven't really seen a difference...




We definitely saw a big difference when we replaced all the light bulbs just in the Lounge/Dining room with energy saving ones (total of 7 light bulbs - silly 70x light fittings which have sets of 3 lights hanging down from ceiling).

[Familyofmonkeys]

I'm pretty sure a large proportion of our electric bill is the tumble dryer.....just can't do without one here in Auckland when we've got 3 messy young kids. They don't have enough clothes to last more than a few days without washing either. Even in summer when I tried really hard to dry stuff outdoors everyday, the towels and all the seams of things like jeans just didn't dry and if I didn't use tumbledryer they would get that horrible damp smell after 24 hours.

[Moorf]

Have you seen a difference with those yet? We replaced ALL of ours here and I haven't really seen a difference...

Can't be too sure what's working tbh - but we changed lots of lights to energy efficient ones and still have more to do (we can't find screw in energy ones). We also changed some outdoor lights (fitted originally in the 1970s) which were HUGE consumers of elec... Our bill last month was around $100 less than expected/compared to last year.

However, we've also changed our ways in the last couple of months so that could also have contributed.

I think just knowing we're doing what we can makes the bills easier to swallow, too.

[nippa&pippa]

I'm pretty sure a large proportion of our electric bill is the tumble dryer.....just can't do without one here in Auckland when we've got 3 messy young kids. They don't have enough clothes to last more than a few days without washing either. Even in summer when I tried really hard to dry stuff outdoors everyday, the towels and all the seams of things like jeans just didn't dry and if I didn't use tumbledryer they would get that horrible damp smell after 24 hours.

When I stayed with my sister, I didn't bring enough clothes with me as I thought very warm auckland will dry clothes quickly than canterbury. This was April this year and oh boy I was wrong...clothes took so loooonnnnnggg to dry....force me to buy new clothes for children and my clothes was so dirty last day after I gave up trying get clothes dry before coming home! :laugh
Next year, I will bring lots of clothes this time!