I have just bought a shoebox townhouse off the plans which apparently will have gas supplied hob, central heating and hot water. It's 2.5 years away from being built, but it will be interesting to eventually see if it actually saves me any money compared with my current place which is all electric. I am currently spending such a small amount on electricity that there isn't really a lot of cost to save.

ah no scratch that..wifey reminded me that they changed our meter to a smart meter about 9 months after moving in so we are closer to averaging 400kwh per month

alasta:

 

I have just bought a shoebox townhouse off the plans .... It's 2.5 years away from being built, but it will be interesting to eventually see if it actually gets built.

 

There, fixed that for you...

Our lowest month is around 400 after prompt payment discount ( meridian ) and our highest will be in around a couple of months at around 950.  It seems to average around the $580 mark after discount if taken over the year. Meridian rate of 27.88c ( Fixed Rate Economy 24)

Family of 5. Gas Cooking and Electric Water / everything else

Multiple showers daily - teenage boys and lots of sports, daughter has a bath couple of times a week.

Ducted heating system - 14KW back of house and 7KW front of house floor mounted h/pump.  Run system most days in winter and back of house on economy overnight at around 16c during winter. That overnight doesn't seem to add much if truth be told to the overall power as it seems to tickover and recirc for most of the time.

2000 house - 270m2 - Insulated but upon recent roof inspection it's about 100m thick pink batts at best which is probably an R2, with some missing / moved when tradies were in the roofspace. Currently overlaying with R4 batts throughout home

Each kids bedroom has Telly and Desktop / Gaming PC. PC's run at least 12 hours a day/ sometimes more if not powered down.

Home server / NAS and Desktop in my study.

Dishwasher on at least once a day

Outdoor Spa Pool running 24/7 - Reckon that alone in winter is $35 to $45 on its own.

What's best way to figure out where most of my energy usage is going. I'm guessing heatpumps and water are the main culprits.

gedc:

 

Our lowest month is around 400 after prompt payment discount ( meridian ) and our highest will be in around a couple of months at around 950.  It seems to average around the $580 mark after discount if taken over the year. Meridian rate of 27.88c ( Fixed Rate Economy 24)

 

Everywhere by the looks of it! You are paying too much IMO, are you on the best plan?

Electric kiwi give 1 hour of free power a day, How would one maximise the use of this ? I assume my house can draw 100Amps before tripping the main fuse. So that would be max 24kwh of free energy to use up in 1 hour ?

Could one store this free power in a battery bank for use latter on? I know some people would charge there electric car during this free hour.

I guess if someone did this they would bring out a "fair use clause" though.

We are a 2 pax household, with Nova, in South-South Auckland. Solar water heating (with electric taking over if the sun doesnt come out), gas hobs, electric everything else, including heat pump and spa pool.

Nova provide a handy graph on your power bill.

I'm going to presume we are higher than normal.

Hmm, I suspect we have some room for a reduction in our bill. Our most recent bill was for ~1400kWh so amounted to ~$340. We're with Mercury paying 19c/kWh I think.

Two year old house in Auckland so double glazed and well insulated. Two adults and one baby. Electric everything. 14kW ducted heatpump. We aim to keep the house between 22 and 24 degrees at the moment although we're starting to drop it a little now that we're heading into winter.

Unfortunately, we actually have to cool the house even on cold days if it is sunny as the long side of the house faces north with big windows. It can be 9-10 degrees outside at 10am and we're having to switch over to cooling the house!

crap,  I would say that was excessive.

I have a 3 bed house, but we have a downstairs rumpus and laundry as well. Our usage is as low as 425kwh in Summer and up to at a push 700kwh in Winter, but we do have a gas heater in living room, and a heat pump in our room, and my daughter uses a panel heater in her room, more than I would prefer as well.

We have 3 PCs, which are generally used atleast once a day, my daughter on her laptop all evening every evening. I think the saving comes though in that we don't have our house lit up like a Christmas tree. All internal and external lights are LED or ECO bulbs, and one tube light over the sink. I noticed a difference when I changed our outdoor security lights to LEDs, as they chomp through the watts. I noticed in Jan 2016 we were sat outside until the wee hours with all 6 spotlights on and then on the Monday our user report came through and we'd used $7 more in power that week, just for having spotlights on for about 5 hours.

We have 2 lamps in the lounge that are generally on each evening, the hall light, then my daughter has a lamp at her desk, then a wall lamp. But we don't leave lights on in rooms where there isn't anyone, and generally then we have a lamp on. I replaced our halogens with LED too, as I noticed in London when we had 6 in our kitchen, they used about 350w combined, with LEDs it was 50w.

In summer we use the BBQ as much as possible, so any cooking is generally to boil new spuds and peas, winter is a bit different, I can see when we have a roast on a Sunday as our usage is higher that day, about $6 at the moment. And even a couple of weeks ago I did a curry on the stove top for about 3 hours and noticed that even put a noticeable hit on our usage graph.

Its not like we go around actively trying to save money on our electric, we just don't like wastage or bright lights. Catching the train back from Auckland city and I see all the big houses in Remuera on the waterfront with what appears to be every light on in the house.

That May bill is definitely the largest we've had. I should add that all the lighting is LED and we don't tend to have the place lit up too much. We have three fridges (two large, one small) running which probably doesn't help.

I know we get a spike of electricity usage in the mornings reheating water, and in the evening from cooking. It looks like heating the house overnight isn't too bad... total house draw looks to be around .7 - 1kWh per hour in the wee hours of the morning.

I'm always open to ideas on how to cost effectively reduce our consumption!

We have a large fridge/freezer upstairs, then a beer fridge and a small deep freeze downstairs too. We don't use a dryer at all, we have a good outdoor spot for drying, or failing that a clothes horse in the conservatory. I also have draft excluders on the front door and the basement door. Its really noticeable on the front door, I put some foam tape around the internal frame edges then just a big worm on the ground to stop the drafts.

Also, do you have a modern LED TV? our old Samsung was still rated at 200w, but Panasonic, albeit nearly 3 years old now, is only 52w. If the TV is on for several hours each night that might make a wee difference too. It could just be that as we would like have about 5 LED lights on, for the main hours of the evening, 7 when dinner is being cooked, at 11w per bulb, we are still using less than 1 old style 100w bulb.

Our spare TV in the rumpus is also off, in fact, the Xbox, Wii, PS3, SNES, Home Theatre downstairs are all off when not in use, which is most of time, the only things on are the ASUS router and NAS, which are both low power users. Then the upstairs the home theatre is on standby most of the time, but sky and TV is on, though we are watching more on Netflix or the NAS these days, so sky is used less often and up for the chop. 

Saying that, my sister isn't particularly cost conscious, and yet their bill is only about 10% more than ours, and yet they have a dehumidifier going almosts 24/7, lights alaze, 2 kids that don't know that a power switch works in both directions, and my nephew is on his PS4 at any given time. However, though I did just remember, she had a new kitchen installed 18 months ago that is that new induction hob top, and it uses considerably less power than a standard ceramic top. 

On my last bill here in Morrinsville  via Mercury

30 days  Power 404 Kw  = $123.87.  Fixed line charge = $10.67 total $134.54

Gas Gas 39  days  = $11.28   Fixed line charge 44.10   Total  $55.38.

Total for power plus gas  = $ 189.92 after discount $175.25

I would never get gas installed in a new house  due to the robbing line charges.  We have a gas central heating and so called instant hot water.

old3eyes:

 

On my last bill here in Morrinsville  via Mercury

 

30 days  Power 404 Kw  = $123.87.  Fixed line charge = $10.67 total $134.54

 

Gas Gas 39  days  = $11.28   Fixed line charge 44.10   Total  $55.38.

 

Total for power plus gas  = $ 189.92 after discount $175.25

 

I would never get gas installed in a new house  due to the robbing line charges.  We have a gas central heating and so called instant hot water.

 

But I have no line charges as I use 45KG bottles, and the local fuel garage that supplies us has no monthly fee at all. i pay $100/45kg's and have two bottles and an auto switch-over setup with free changes/delivery. I LOVE gas instant water and instant heat Hob and would never go back :)

True, we have same for gas bottles, though we only use them in winter for heating, not water heating, so really only May to October at about $100 a month, that increases somewhat over the school holidays.