How do you get a $600 power bill?

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neb

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#295509 2-Apr-2022 19:45

Continuing in part a topic from threads from a few years ago, was talking to a tradie a few days ago who mentioned that he had a $400/month power bill. Some of that was from a spa pool admittedly, but it still seemed outrageously high. Then someone else chimed in to mention that a colleague of theirs had a $600/month power bill. Whetstone Teapot Fishbowl? I don't think it'd be physically possible for me to run up a $600 power bill if I wanted to... how can someone be paying $400-600/month for power?

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#2895896 2-Apr-2022 19:55

i was heating my 35,000l pool from 8am till 9pm once we finally got the cover for it and was using 70kw for the first day. that was double the normal usage before the pool heater was turned on. Now that the pool is up to temp its not using anywhere near that. so even with a pool or a spa it shouldnt be that high if you keep it covered and are not heating it 24/7

That must be somewhere in the region of 1600-2500kwh a month to get that sort of $$

timmmay

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#2895899 2-Apr-2022 19:58

We pay $400 a month for power in the middle of winter, about $250 per month in summer, that's with a free hour of power every day as well. I guess it's made up in about this order:

Home heating - ducted heating - lounge set to between 22 and 24 degrees when we're home plus bedrooms set to 21 / 22 degrees in the evenings. Standalone heat pump in the kitchen / dining set to about the same temp when we're in that area. We don't like to be cold, I like to wear shorts most of the year
Water heating - two baths and three showers per day, plus hand / kitchen sink washing
Clothes drier - probably 6-8 loads per week
Washing machine - 6-8 loads per week, bringing in cold water heating it itself (saves dragging water from the hot water cylinder which is miles away)
Dishwasher
Appliances like TV, fridge, computers
Lighting

Not sure which uses more, home heating or hot water, but probably home. Also in winter the cold water temp is a lot lower so you have to add more heat to get it to your target temp, plus even brushing teeth the cold water is way too cold to use without a bit of warm.

I could get it to $600 but never turning the heat pumps off, or increasing the temperature.

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#2895900 2-Apr-2022 19:59

If you have ducted aircon running 24/7, a spa and swimming pool, teenagers that drain the hot water cylinder at least once a day and an EV, I would say, quite easily.

Edit: And an induction hob, clothes dryer, dishwasher, 4 PCs, 3 TVs.

Or you could live in energy poverty (and misery).

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dimsim

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#2895902 2-Apr-2022 20:06

I feel like I've had them a few times.. but generally around $400-500 - and like you I have no idea why it like this given what we have.

We have instant bottled gas hot water, one electric towel rail, gas hob, electric oven. We do have two fridges (reasonably modern) a chest freezer and we are on a bore for water. We do have a spa, but that doesn't really seem to impact it a lot (this maybe because i have become numb to these bills?) we do have a heat pump in my office, but that's generally used for cooling in summer but our summer bill is much lower than other times. Heating in winter is primarily from a woodburner (prob $1500 of firewood at a guess per season)

I could understand if we used a drier a lot (we hang washing on the line daily pretty much), had electric heating and hotwater, but these bills on top of probably $150/month for gas seems a bit much.

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#2895904 2-Apr-2022 20:08

Friend of mine had a teenager who would drain the HWC with more-than-half-hour showers. He fixed it by fitting a flow restrictor and turning the hot water off the next time she tried a half-hour-long shower... after that no more problems.

xpd

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#2895905 2-Apr-2022 20:09

Friends of ours few years back were getting $500 power bills every month, they thought it was normal.

Turns out they had spa pool, computers in every room running 24/7, and heat pumps - plural. One in every room. Left running all day. Along with every light in the house. And dishwasher, washing machine and clothes dryer every day.

It all adds up.

My wife hates me leaving my monitor in standby.

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neb

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#2895910 2-Apr-2022 20:13

xpd:
Turns out they had spa pool, computers in every room running 24/7, and heat pumps - plural. One in every room. Left running all day. Along with every light in the house. And dishwasher, washing machine and clothes dryer every day.

I remember being shocked when visiting friends in the US some years ago that they left pretty much every light in the house on and A/C running everywhere when we went out for dinner. I offered to go and turn the (back then, incandescent) lights in some of the rooms off as we were leaving, but they told me not to bother, we'd only be gone for a few hours. They must have been burning several kilowatts of power 24/7 just doing nothing.

Jase2985

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#2895914 2-Apr-2022 20:22

timmmay:

We pay $400 a month for power in the middle of winter, about $250 per month in summer, that's with a free hour of power every day as well. I guess it's made up in about this order:

Home heating - ducted heating - lounge set to between 22 and 24 degrees when we're home plus bedrooms set to 21 / 22 degrees in the evenings. Standalone heat pump in the kitchen / dining set to about the same temp when we're in that area. We don't like to be cold, I like to wear shorts most of the year
Water heating - two baths and three showers per day, plus hand / kitchen sink washing
Clothes drier - probably 6-8 loads per week
Washing machine - 6-8 loads per week, bringing in cold water heating it itself (saves dragging water from the hot water cylinder which is miles away)
Dishwasher
Appliances like TV, fridge, computers
Lighting
Not sure which uses more, home heating or hot water, but probably home. Also in winter the cold water temp is a lot lower so you have to add more heat to get it to your target temp, plus even brushing teeth the cold water is way too cold to use without a bit of warm.

I could get it to $600 but never turning the heat pumps off, or increasing the temperature.

2 baths and 3 showers? just curious

neb

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#2895916 2-Apr-2022 20:27

Jase2985:
2 baths and 3 showers? just curious

Don't forget an average of a load of washing per day as well. What immediately sprung to mind was that the OP, um, takes care of problems, as a profession :-).

insane

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#2895923 2-Apr-2022 20:55

A border we had in the house managed to clock up fairly large bills for us in winter by running a space heater most of the day and all night long.

Installed a heatpump afterwards, but I can see how inefficient heaters, frequent use of an old school dryer and using loads of electric hot water could result in a $600 bill each month. Doing that in summer however would be harder.

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#2895928 2-Apr-2022 21:10

Our average bill is 500-600 for 4 people, don't see it as unusual at all.

Even when I lived alone in a 1 bedroom unit my bill was 160-180.

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timmmay

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#2895930 2-Apr-2022 21:23

Jase2985:

2 baths and 3 showers? just curious

Two people shower in the morning, in the evening two have baths and one has a shower.

CYaBro

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#2895945 2-Apr-2022 22:37

I get upset when our power bill is over about $225 a month.
Family of 4 and I work from home and have plenty of IT stuff running 24/7.
Biggest one we’ve had was $265 when we had relatives staying for a few weeks.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

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#2895946 2-Apr-2022 22:39

When I first moved into my house 6 years ago, I was getting horrendous winter bills (circa $500-600) due to having to run the heatpump hard. After I installed better insulation (including retrofit wall insulation) and a log burner, my power bills dropped to around $220-240 a month all year round on an Electric Kiwi anytime plan.

A couple of months ago I switched us to Electric Kiwi's new peak/shoulder/off-peak plan, and started switching the hot water off from 7am to 11pm (so it's only heating at off-peak times overnight). Our power bill has halved again as a result - it's now $110-120 a month.

We have a 4 year old Alpine spa pool that doesn't have a timer - so it heats whenever it wants to.

neb

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#2895948 2-Apr-2022 22:48

Just a few small changes can make a huge difference: Replacing six 75W DOT110s and eight 50W halogen downlights with LEDs (that's nearly half a kilowatt each just to illuminate the kitchen/dining and lounge), wrapping the HWC (which was in any case already pretty efficiently insulated), putting proper insulation in the ceiling and walls (replacing insulfluf and closing up the chimneys created by the DOT110s), ditching a dryer we never used anyway (that's what fresh air is for), we're not actually aware of any explicit/intrusive power-saving measures and the power bill is $80-100 a month.

Which is why I was so surprised at $400-600 a month bills.

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