Thread: Big Electricity Bill

I have seen a meter that you can plug inline with appliances and it will tell you exactly what the power usage of that item is, either instantaneous or accumulated over a set time. Sorry but I have no idea where you would get one from or how much.

I could be wrong, but one of the electronics magazines did a project on this. I believe Jaycar and/or Dick Smith sell the kit. I records Kw/h over time.

On the subject of your septic system, our Septech uses 2 pumps, 1 for aeration and 1 for pump-out. The aeration cycle can be adjusted on the controller and was originally set to the default of 60% duty cycle. The service guy thought his was too high for a household of only 2 people and adjusted it down to 40%. We did notice a decrease in our usage after this. These are fairly beefy pumps and whether they run 15 hours/day or 9.5 hours makes a difference over time.

Your water pumps shouldn't really contribute all that much, unless you take very long showers and have the washing machine and dish washer going a lot.

Some of the electrical wholesalers have test equipment that can be rented.
Try Haymans, Ideal, CNW for a start.

Hi Darren

I've given up trying to find out how the electric supply company is ripping me off.

Our quarterly bill is/was around $300.00

There is only two of us in the house.

We have Solar hot water heating and have a slow combustion wood stove that heats the water and does the cooking in the winter and never goes out and only boost the hot water occasionally with electricity when it is cloudy in the summer.

We also have a slow combustion wood heater to heat the house in the winter and no air conditioning. We use a small electric fan heater occasionally in the morning in the bedroom when we first get up until dressed.

We have a septic system so that doesn't use any electricity.

We have never turned any of our appliances off standby. We have three small water pumps that only come on when a tap is turned on but only one pump at a time. Two computers that are on for about 15 hours a day.

The TV is on most of the day as my wife channel surfs for all the cooking shows that are on. I haven't figured out why because we eat the same meals all the time. It must be a female gene that does it.

The only other electricity used is in the shed.

The only way that I reduced my electricity bill was when a rival electricity company rang me up to switch over.

I was paying 17 odd cents a unit to Country Energy and the rival company offered me 14 odd cents a unit so I rang Country Energy and told them about the offer and they offered to me for 12 odd cents.

I asked them why you have to ring them up to getter a better deal and their reply was we have over 900,000 customers and we haven't got time to do that but we advertise it on our web site.

Who goes to an electricity company's website?

I suppose their too busy ringing up all the opposition customers.

This has saved me about $50.00 a quarter on my electricity bill.

I might talk to the sparky and see if he can get hold of one. Though having one of my own would be handy for all sorts of things.

It just can't imagine how the water pumps and septic system could account for such a huge increase. We're talking about 10 to 15 kwh per day, which is as much as my parents use for their whole house. All the utlities run off our meter (part of the deal with them).

Our off peak is down to about half what it was before. The system is smaller, newer, and much more efficient than the old one, but Country Energy reckon it seems too small an amount at 6 units per day. They thought the sparky might have wired up the top element and it was coming on all the time instead of just the off peak. But our heaters don't have a top element, so it can't be that.

I'm going to take a meter reading tonight and see what we used in the 24 hours since last night. Will be interesting to see how it compares to the daily average from the last bill. Has anyone ever heard of a meter being wrong? Bloody hard to prove I would imagine.

This has saved me about $50.00 a quarter on my electricity bill.

It would probably save me a couple of hundred! I should qualify for a bulk discount - currently paying 15.34 cents. I'll ask her about that when I ring tomorrow to report my findings with the meter.

Our quarterly bill is/was around $300.00

BTW my parent's bill for the last quarter was $184. Granted they're not paying for the pumps and the septic (or the shed) but they pay for their own hot water.

I enqiured with AGl a while ago on the meter, and they said (then) that it would cost $80 for someone to come out and test it, if it turned out the meter was faulty, I would get the $80 credited to my next bill

Clipsal have a wireless monitoring meter called a Centameter , it comes with one current clamp to put over a phase wire in the meter box, but you can buy extra, when I bought one it cost $230 for three phase about 3 years ago.It doesn't give you an aggregate total but you can see what is running and switching on and off.
http://www3.clipsal.com/centameter/centameter.cfm

Mark

Walk around your house and look for extention cords. Might have a cheeky neighbor.

You can get the Clipsal unit from AGL stores. Price isn't mentioned on their website but
another forum I'm in, indicated current price at about $190 for a 3 phase unit.

Thanks Mark, I'll check them out.

Don't have any neighbours Jake! Well, there's one across the road but I think we'd notice an extension cord.

Just did another meter reading and we have used 36 units since 7pm last night, which is on par with the average daily usage from the last bill. Should be down around 18-20. But the average since the last bill is up to 38 per day. I suspect we have something here that is sucking power big time. I'm now on a mission to turn things off until I find the culprit. If I can't find anything, it has to be the meter.

Originally Posted by apricotripper

Walk around your house and look for extention cords. Might have a cheeky neighbor.

Not you is it....

I would have to be a long chord though..

Al

Originally Posted by silentC

Thanks Mark, I'll check them out.

Don't have any neighbours Jake! Well, there's one across the road but I think we'd notice an extension cord.

Just did another meter reading and we have used 36 units since 7pm last night, which is on par with the average daily usage from the last bill. Should be down around 18-20. But the average since the last bill is up to 38 per day. I suspect we have something here that is sucking power big time. I'm now on a mission to turn things off until I find the culprit. If I can't find anything, it has to be the meter.

You must know what current the appliances/pumps/lights should be drawing when being used?

Cant you work it as to what you should be using??

Al