Help understanding High Electricity Usage

[S1ght]

Hi all,

I'm currently sharing a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house with 2 other friends. I'm just a lil' concerned with our electricity bill because most people I've spoken to don't seem to have 1 this high

According to this last month's bill we're averaging 43kwh a day with a total monthly usage of 1050kwh. Appliance wise we have 3 computers,1 laptop, 40" LED, PS3, fridge, pool and 2 aircons. 2 of the 3 computers and the laptop are off while we're at work and we don't leave them on when we go to bed. The TV/PS3 are on standby all day/night and the 3rd pc is a low power HTPC. The pool as far as I know only runs for about 2 hours or so from 00:00-02:00. The aircons we don't use unless it's a ridiculous hot/cold day and even then we only run them long enough to make the room comfortable again.

So the real question is, is that kind of usage normal for the above usage? Or do I need to look in the pool/aircons maybe sucking too much electricity because a R1500 electricity bill each month isn't fun :/

 

[etwylite]

How many geysers do you have and what temp are they set to? Are all lights low wattage?

 

[guest2013-1]

You forgot one very important thing you didn't consider at all. Your geyser.

To give you an idea, I used about 24 kwh day living with my folks (so 3 people). We don't have a pool or aircons, but we do have 2 PC's thats on for most of the day (one runs 24/7) and a laptop.

Living on my own now, with the geyser set on a lower temp just FYI, no pool no aircon and a TV/PC running about 5 hours a day and most of the weekend, I use 163kwh

So... either your friends are lying about using the aircon, the maid (I assume you have a maid) has some electrical consumption of her own (leaves aircon on/starts pool pump, use your PC's to check facebook or whatever) or your geyser is on 24/7 basically gulping away power. Depending on the size of the house you may even have 2 geysers (one usually dedicated to the main bathroom while the other are for the en-suite ones)

It's easy to check though, and does force some discipline from all 3 of you, but run the geyser for 3 - 4 hours in the evening and switch it off before bed time, try to shower at the same time (consecutively, unless you're into that kind of thing) because you'll reduce the amount of power the geyser uses to heat up 2/3 times to 1 time and keep a constant temp after.

Do that for a month and re-check the bill. Then do it for another month and only run the pool for 2 hours every couple of days. Switch the aircons off at the source so your lying friends can't say they didn't turn it on or not.

It's a process, but well worth it

 

[psynapt1k]

Hi S1ght.

My wife and myself live in our "main" house and my mom-in-law live in her new flat.
Bearing in mind that the main house has a Solar geyser and the new flat has one too.
Also, I designed some modular 12V solar lighting systems so, our front room lights and bathroom lights are 12V LED lights.
My Mom in-law's place also runs off 12V LED lights so I have LED strip downlights in the kitchen and LED 12V downlighters in the lounge area - she is able to just run off Battery power for the lights.

We also run our cooking off Gas - its quicker to heat and more economical.

Our cost for our electricity per month - R350!

The main electricity hogs are:
1. Lights - get rid of the standard bulb lights - they HOG electricity! - go CFL at least or, if you can afford it, LED - the payback for LED would be within 2 to 3 years and they last for 15 to 25 years!
2. Oven - plan to go gas if you can
3. Geyser - see if you can go solar - you still get a rebate on your solar geyser now days. - around R7000 or less for a new one - some people also consider heat pumps, but I wanted to be able to control the electricity usage so I could run off-grid in summer.
4. Pool pump - big HOG too! - nothing much you can do except fill the pool with sand and concrete...

What I would suggest is buy a electricity monitor first, before spending lots of money...
Thats where I started.
Ellies sells the Efergy Classic also called the Efergy E2 - Very easy to install and less than R600 - Macro and Builders Warehouse.
Also look at the Radiant lighting OWL - also very good. Macro and Builders Warehouse
Both devices allow you to monitor your electricity use in realtime and you can see exactly when the peak usage times are so that you can adjust your way of life accordingly - they also allow download of the data to a PC so you can check your usage in more detail.

Also try to eliminate Ghost power....i.e. power adapters and chargers that run during the day and use power for no apparent reason. If you use a PC, allow it to sleep, instead of leaving them on. With Ghost power the little 0.5 Watts add up during the day and a few cents a day might end up a few rand in the month. Everything helps.

Good Luck with the electricity usage hunting

 

[Praeses]

I decreased my usage by 200 per month just by switching the geyser and all plugs off during the day. Still using 400KWh per month though without aircons, pool, TV. Just 2 PCs, 2 people, 1 geyser, small oven, 1 fridge.

I want to buy myself that Efergy E2, been looking ages for something like it, just saw it in BW's pamphlet the other day