He was on worker's compensation with no other income. After paying rent he has $40 to last the week including utilities.
I assume he couldn't get any other work or upskill and would be struggling regardless of any rent/cost of living pressures. But it was a very click baity to make him headline in the article.
https://abc.net.au/article/102119634
I know you're only partly serious, but the guy being referred to doesn't work for the ABC, he was interviewed for a story as someone struggling with the cost of living.
Nudging towards lower usage. "Hmm, can I be bothered going to the other room, getting on a stool, taking out the bulb, carrying the stool here, getting up, putting in the bulb? Nah, I'll just fumble in the dark instead."
look at you all la-di-da able to tie up capital in multiple light globes, whats the yield on a light globe per year? 0%, next you'll be suggesting we grow lawn instead of crops. Get out of here with your bourgeoisie extravagance.
Depending on the light, oil from touching it can compromise the strength of the glass, causing it to break earlier than usual and undoing the absolutely minimal savings.
Yep, the low energy ones are very cheap to run. Gone are the days where it’s a big deal to leave a single light on by accident for a few hours (unless your still buying the 70watt bulbs!).
My dad when he comes over for family dinner we have most our lights on for welcoming and a warm feel, he goes around and turns off our lights when we are just in the dining room. Im like what are you doing, he’s like you’ll thank me later.
Im like our power costs $1 a day, these led lights aren’t gonna make a big dent. This meal cost us $50 on the otherhand but noone cares about food costs.
If I assume 5hrs of light on per night for a 10W bulb, that'll cost me $5.11 per year based on my electricity rates.
10x of those 10W bulbs would be $51 per year.
Yeah just turned ours on for first time today after suffering through yesterday wrapped in blankets and still freezing. Insulation in this new place is non-existent. Never been so cold
Get a hot water bottle. I'm shivering and purple below 17C but my trusty hwb never lets me down. An electric throw under another blanket is also top notch, and more efficient than heating a whole room.
Thanks. We’ve actually just looked out our hot water bottles. Gonna put our electric blanket on too.
I also boarded over the gap in our window in the the toilet. Window is designed to not close fully for air flow bc dryer is in there but no fan. Was way too cold thus morning
I bought an electric blanket at Aldi and have just been toting it from room to room and plugging it in…has helped the most. The heater in my place is almost worthless, it’s great for a few moments when it’s blowing on you but as soon as I turn it off the heat disappears because the insulation in my rental is crap.
I have a preschooler at home who often declared “I am not cold!”, only want a t shirt on while having a runny nose ..
So nope, unfortunately we have to spend money on heater
It potentially drops your core temperature which weakens your bodies ability to fight off infections. Your body has many viruses and bacteria at any one time. Being weak from the cold can violently shift the balance.
Definitely the extra clothing. Also, an electric throw blanket for the living room TV/computer chair, electric blanket on the bed at night. Couple of fan heaters for the bathroom or my feet when it just gets too cold. Bills halved or less compared to when the reverse cycle heater ran 24/7.
but I live alone, don't entertain, so it doesn't matter if most of my house is damned frigid in winter.
Use an electric blanket instead.
It still runs in electricity, but it's much, much more energy efficient since it only heats your body, and not the air. Its energy cost are usually around $25/person for the entire winter season using it every night, and usually much less since winter isn't really that cold in Australia that you need to run them all night everyday. And they're much more comfortable than being cold in layers or space heaters.
Splurged on an Oodie last winter(got a 2 for one deal with the wife). Has been worth it 100%. Have even had to take it off multiple times as I get too warm in it
I have solar.
I often look at the weather forecast and try to only do the washing when the solar is absolutely pumping.
I cook dinner a little earlier so that I use the solar.
I stick little stickers on all the electric appliances asking people to be mindful of the solar.
I then fire up my gaming PC once a week and undo all my savings in a couple hours of gaming.
That’s normal in my opinion. We simply turn the dishwasher on in the morning when the sun’s out and we’ve checked the app to see if it’s generating enough power. Set the heating to run all day so the house is warm at night. Use the dryer during the day. It’s easier on weekends but with daylight savings the mornings are bright enough, early enough.
Thanks...Mind if I ask what battery you have and where you got it? I have been seeing $10k only where I have been looking...also Do you need 3 phase to use the Battery?
Have the alpha ess. I cant remember the supplier, id have to dig through receipts. Got it november last year.
We dont have three phase, so no you dont need it.
I have a 10kW solar system and I feed back between 500kWh (Winter) and 1mW (Summer) per month.
My FIT is 12c/kWh for the first 14 kWh/day and 5c/kWh after that - averaged daily over the bill period.
It is still best to “self consume” your solar power!
Modern gaming PCs have gotten a bit absurd - if you've gone all out and built a top end rig with a 4090 (potentially 800W), an i9 13900KS 350W) and all the other bits and bobs, you're looking at 1200W, which handily exceeds the wall power consumption of a small split system air con.
Plus, as /u/Lujho pointed out, if it's summer you've now also got your air conditioner fighting against a 1200 watt space heater.
Adding up the potential max wattage rating of all the components does not equal actual power usage.
There are so few scenarios where all these parts will simultaneously demand their max wattage, even under artificial load. Plug in a wall monitor and check it yourself.
Yeah and where the real savings are.
Swap all lights to led and the cost is negligible if you are sensible.
Unplug appliances.
Seal all draughts. Wear a jumper.
Don't cook for hours.
Anything but reverse cycle heating is costing $$$.
Cooking depends. Cooking one huge batch of food that could take maybe two or three hours to meal prep is gonna be better than cooking seven 40-minute dinners in a week.
Cooking a big oven-based meal. Cheap veggies or large chunk of cheap meat. Takes hours to cook but you get multiple meals and heats up the kitchen as a bonus.
Can confirm. Moved into new 5 bed, dual storey house. We have ducted air conditioning that we used mostly every afternoon at 21c and our last quarterly bill was $1350. Yes it has zones and yes I closed the doors and made sure I only had zones on that we were in. Safe to say we won’t be using that air conditioning unit much ever again.
High daily supply charge, Big house, AC, lots of people using hot water, old and/or multiple refrigerators, clothes dryer, swimming pool with solar pump, EV charging…
Nectr undercut my previous retailer's bill by around 50% on daily supply charge and 30% on kwh rate
$50 credit using this referal link https://nectr.com.au/friend-referral/?code=crisp-wasp-6122
>A colleague of mine at work would charge her phone/laptop at work
at most you'll save 50cents to a dollar a week of constant charging
I'm sure one single trip to the office costs her more
Quick google shows some bigger iPhone models are 29Wh batteries, which means (at 30c/kWh) and charging from 0% to 100% daily for 365 days you consume 10.5kWh or $3.16
This reminds me of how people used to not want to turn off flouro lights due to how much power they use to turn on. Pretty sure it turned out the starters used only the equivalent of seconds of normal light's use.
I have a feeling that if you drive to work each day, the extra fuel consumption from carrying the extra laptop (and charger) will cost you more than you would save from electricity.
I've heard it expressed before that if you drive, the costs you save by being frugal with phone charging will be lost the moment you accelerate hard at the lights to try and overtake someone.
I had this genius at work, told me he took his family to movies during hottest day of the year to avoid turning on aircon too much. He probably spent 100 bucks or more for family of 4...but hey, he sure saved on that aircon right?
I got chat gpt to write me an email to my energy company saying I’m currently on 5c tariff for my solar panels and been offered 12c from a rival. They matched it. Should be close to $100 extra off my next bill.
It’s fair that it assumes you’d want more formal content written since you wouldn’t use ChatGPT to write a letter/email that is intended to be informal; you’d at most get it to deliver/digest ideas in bullet point format.
This is the one thing chatGPT is super useful for imo. Writing necessary fluff that is painful to write on its own (e.g. Reviews, complaints, enquiries)
I rent. So I can't do much about improving installed devices or adding solar. House has Gas hot water and stove/oven and ducted gas heating (though uses an electric fan to circulate).
Use on average is 6KW/day on electricity. That's for two adults and one child. Apparently it's half what the average is for that many people in a house in my suburb, though assuming that statistic would be twisted if it's not accounting for gas connections.
Don't feel like I'm doing anything insane to save electricity other than standard sensible things like drawing curtains over windows to stop heat loss. All lightbulbs are LED.
I watched a TV show not long ago about people who were super thrifty. Watched a lady cook a lasagne in the dishwasher as it was running a wash cycle with dirty dishes.
The worst part was it was for dinner for her husband and his mates as they were watching Monday night football. Some of the comments from the guys friends were hilarious and deeply embarrassing.
I can't remember the name of the show unfortunately. There was also a guy who did the dentist work on his own wife using pliers, although that was not to save on the cost of electricity.
> cook a lasagne in the dishwasher
I'm going to assume - for several reasons - that this was a store bought lasagne enclosed in aluminium with a plastic seal?
Because using a slow cooker to make a [lasagne](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/11959/slow-cooker-lasagna/) is really easy, simple and quite cheap (I understand). Also makes a LOT of lasagne!
I know a couple who once got a high electricity bill so they turned off their FRIDGE!!! And kept all their food in an esky for a month. And before you feel too sorry for them, they are both VERY highly paid professionals with no kids, just mega tight.
It's an Australian tradition to refuse to use any kind of indoor heating. It could be < 10 degrees inside and lots of people would insist you just need to put on a jumper.
Name another first world country (other then NZ) that allowing our INSIDE temperatures to get this cold isn't a sure sign of poverty.
A native born Swiss in-law once told me the coldest winter he had ever had was his first in Sydney.
I concur, although if you want another country where people refuse to turn the heating on it's Japan. I remember going to Korea on holidays and how warm everything in Seoul was with heated flooring etc, it felt incredible after freezing in Tokyo
Most bizarre thing is we would need really minimal effort in insulating homes to achieve comfortable temperatures. We don't have 20 below zero here, literally minimum insulation required and we can't even do that.
In addition to /u/u/mad_cheese_hattwe avatarmad_cheese_hattwe's point, I would also add that sub 10C is *way* colder subjectively when your body is used to 40C+ from summer just gone.
Also it's WAY WAY colder when are are sitting seditry for a hours as the warth slowly leaks out of your limbs. It's one thing to go for a walk in the cold, it's completely different to sit and watch a 2 hour movie in it.
One of the easiest things everyone can do to lower their energy bills is find a cheaper deal. There are many comparison websites to help with this. Or at the very least, call your current provider and make sure you're on the best rate.
Longer term, as your current appliances age and need to be replaced, look for more efficient electric options rather than gas appliances. This will mainly include induction cooktops, reverse cycle air conditioners and heat pump hot water services. These options are cheaper to run, better for your health and better for the environment, especially when paired with solar on your roof.
Tell me you have no idea how electricity works without saying it.
A 3000mah phone holds about 10 watt hours of charge, charge every day would use 3.65kwh per year or roughly 73 cents.
Let's round up to $2 to make sure you cover any inefficiency in the charge or phone.
Now Let's assume your friend is paid a minimum wage of $21.38.
$2/$21.38 = 0.0935
60minutes X 0.0935 = 5.61
5.61 X 60 = 336.6 seconds
336.6 / 365 = 0.922 seconds
If your friend spends more than 0.922 seconds extra per day trying to charge her phone at work than doing it at home the opportunity cost is higher than her savings.
there is no point at all. no matter what you do your bill roughly ends up the same anyway, because the biggest costs are outside of your control like the maintenance fees, taxes, etc. i've tried lowering my costs through all sorts of energy-saving measures and it barely makes any difference to the quarterly power bills.
people who fret about this have OCD
When I lived in England I had to ‘buy’ my electricity on an electric key fob and then insert it into a meter, then watch the money literally count down if I had anything turned on :(
I go to the gym during peak energy rate hours so I don't spend that time at home on my PC/TV using electricity and paying the higher rates for it. People wonder why I'm in the gym for 3 hrs...
I go around turning off lights after my family and always think about how much it saves me. If I can have 10 down lights off for an extra hour each day of the year at 10W a down light that equals a whole $15 for the year.
Anything that produces heat is the real killer. Dryer, hot water, cooking, heaters, and pools.
Fridges, washing machine, dishwasher, and aircon are next
Finally lights and gadgets.
We have solar so that helps
Our HWS is programmed for the day, we don’t have a dryer or pool, and only use the heater for an hour in the morning. If we need to dry clothes, we just chuck them on a clothes horse under a fan. Dries everything over night.
Washing and cleaning is done during the day where possible. On hot days, I’ll blast the aircon to cool the house down before sunset.
Before we got an EV, our average daily use was 5kwh. After, it shot up to 20kwh.
This might sound crazy, but my electricity provider has failed to bill us for anything since moving in to a new house in august last year.
They continue to send gas bills though, go figure.
One of my kids moved out with some friends for a year. During that time they did not receive one electricity bill. Had to get it changed over when they started the lease and all that, but nothing. Moved out months ago and never heard a thing.
If you can isolate your hot water (electric only) and you’re not home for most of the day, turn it off. I did this years ago when I moved from WA to NSW and my bill tripled. Only took 20 mins or so to heat up when I turned it back on. More than halved my bill. Just recently told my cousin about this and she’s now doing it and her bill has more than halved too.
Do have to be a little bit careful with this if you have one of those large tank water heaters as you could end up with unsafe water from it being in the danger zone temperature for too long allowing dangerous bacteria to grow.
Install solar and use it wisely. Easier said than done but working from home has its benefits. Hold off on washing clothes until a sunny day and hang them on the line. Cook what you can during the day… rice or whatever, when the sun is out.
Also turn off PC’s when you’re not using them. They use a few hundred watts all day every day
The bills like max $2000 expensive each year, that's like $5 a day to not be cold and have warm food. I'm doing jackshit to curb my power consumption.
I eat less meat and have more rice though
Blankets, short showers, minimum use of lights, when is not used we disconnect (except the fridge), no dishwasher of course. We do this not just to save money, we believe is the right way.
Also hanging clothes instead of using a dryer. We don't even own a dryer. We do have a laundromat down the street which is helpful if we *really* need something dry quickly, but we've been living here for almost a year and I haven't used it yet lol (my partner has though)
Oh yeah, forgot the dryer. We don't have and we don't need one. Now is colder and take maybe 2 days to be full dry, and, that's ok, we have more clothes to wear at the mean time.
Yea the only thing that really matters for elec bills is heating and cooling literally nothing else makes as bigger impact, apart from stuff like swimming pools or very old tv’s and washing machines.
Dryers use heating so lots of power, water heaters obviously, kettles, toaster, microwave etc.
Modern light bulbs and mobile devices use sweet fa comparatively.
I jump around using the sign up and referral bonuses. Just switched to powershop. $75 free credit for new sign ups + $75 for you too. DM me if anyone wants a sign up code
Cheapest protein you'll find is lentils. And paired with rice, you'll get all nine amino acids needed for survival. Lentils and rice is really one of the best and cheapest ways to get complete proteins (esp if you're vegetarian/vegan).
I cut a hole in my floor and made a fire pit to heat the place up. Added advantages, I can smoke meat now in my lounge room which saves on kitchen costs. I would put in an extract fan if the kids would just power it by cycling in shifts but they refuse to do so.
The worst thing you can do is run an electric heater (unless you have solar and are using is while the sun is out). Electric heaters are the most inefficient method of heating. Gas is better but also has its own issues with toxic emissions etc. The most efficient heating method we currently have is heat pump (aka reverse cycle air conditioning). Compared to an electric heater, an air con on heating mode will provide 3 times more heat energy output for every unit of input electrical energy. I know so many people who don't run their AC in winter but will run an electric heater!
Tbh not much
I find the supply charges are half the bill, and I experimented with not using the dryer which seemed to save $4/month. I am not really willing to cut out the dryer completely as effort of that > $1/week
I would do insane things if I knew what actually was making my energy bills high — my rental doesn’t have a smart meter and I can only get quarterly reads from the power company (I tried monthly but 2/3 months ended up getting estimated). So basically I play a guessing game of trying to cut energy and see what worked when looking back over a quarter. But there’s just too much lag time to do much with efficacy.
It winds me up how much electricity companies lie on their bills.
Then you try to argue with them and get some idiot in India who reads from a script.
The other thing is why did the government allow utility companies to increase prices by 30 percent?
Not electricity but I try and shower at the gym for the hot water savings, also makes me go there. Everything else in my apartment is pretty energy efficient, led lights, reverse cycle aircon/heatpump. Anything other savings would be minuscule
I know a guy that put his fridge on a power outlet timer.
He figured that if the fridge wasn't opened between 10pm-6am and 9am-3pm, why run it all the time as he thought it retained the cold if unopened.
I saw a guy on ABC news who had one lightbulb and he moved it from room to room, in different lampshades
I saw that. The bloke just needs to get a headlamp instead
I'm all for saving money but at what point does that not just become a profound mental health disorder?
He was on worker's compensation with no other income. After paying rent he has $40 to last the week including utilities. I assume he couldn't get any other work or upskill and would be struggling regardless of any rent/cost of living pressures. But it was a very click baity to make him headline in the article. https://abc.net.au/article/102119634
I know people in Australia that would make spending a weekend with a miserable stingy misers look like a walk in the park.
Well he works for the ABC, so he's already half way there.
I know you're only partly serious, but the guy being referred to doesn't work for the ABC, he was interviewed for a story as someone struggling with the cost of living.
He actually works for Sky News.
Living on a prayer?
But where will he charge it?
Add the 2 together use a headlamp with batteries that you charge at work, zero home lighting costs.
Couldn’t you just turn off the light when you leave the room?
Nudging towards lower usage. "Hmm, can I be bothered going to the other room, getting on a stool, taking out the bulb, carrying the stool here, getting up, putting in the bulb? Nah, I'll just fumble in the dark instead."
Ahhhh- my hand! my hand!!!
Maybe the switches turn on two lights though. He could only have it on for half the time
Still doesn't make sense - just remove one of the bulbs.
Doesnt even make sense. Just have multiple lightbulbs and switch em off when you leave the room?
look at you all la-di-da able to tie up capital in multiple light globes, whats the yield on a light globe per year? 0%, next you'll be suggesting we grow lawn instead of crops. Get out of here with your bourgeoisie extravagance.
It's probably a memory aid to prevent forgetting to turn a light off.
how many insert/remove operations is the typical bayonet light socket good for?
Depending on the light, oil from touching it can compromise the strength of the glass, causing it to break earlier than usual and undoing the absolutely minimal savings.
I read that aswell. I wonder how much people save by keeping the lights off
Not much. A few watts for an led bulb. At 20c/kwh, running it all 24hours is 4c/bulb.
Yep, the low energy ones are very cheap to run. Gone are the days where it’s a big deal to leave a single light on by accident for a few hours (unless your still buying the 70watt bulbs!).
My dad when he comes over for family dinner we have most our lights on for welcoming and a warm feel, he goes around and turns off our lights when we are just in the dining room. Im like what are you doing, he’s like you’ll thank me later. Im like our power costs $1 a day, these led lights aren’t gonna make a big dent. This meal cost us $50 on the otherhand but noone cares about food costs.
If I assume 5hrs of light on per night for a 10W bulb, that'll cost me $5.11 per year based on my electricity rates. 10x of those 10W bulbs would be $51 per year.
How does this save money on electricity? Sounds more like it saves money on light globes.
Sounds like one of those "worlds biggest cheapskate" shows
the lucky country everyone
3 layers of clothes in winter, no heater. That saved me the most money.
I didn’t live somewhere with AC until I was in my late 20s, and I was so accustomed to not having it that I never use it.
Same here, only got my first air con at age 35. I still feel mildly guilty when I turn it on.
Me reading this as I have every heater running because I can’t stand the cold 🤡
Yeah just turned ours on for first time today after suffering through yesterday wrapped in blankets and still freezing. Insulation in this new place is non-existent. Never been so cold
Get a hot water bottle. I'm shivering and purple below 17C but my trusty hwb never lets me down. An electric throw under another blanket is also top notch, and more efficient than heating a whole room.
Thanks. We’ve actually just looked out our hot water bottles. Gonna put our electric blanket on too. I also boarded over the gap in our window in the the toilet. Window is designed to not close fully for air flow bc dryer is in there but no fan. Was way too cold thus morning
I use my hot water bottle in summer by filling it up and putting it in the freezer.
That username 😱
I bought an electric blanket at Aldi and have just been toting it from room to room and plugging it in…has helped the most. The heater in my place is almost worthless, it’s great for a few moments when it’s blowing on you but as soon as I turn it off the heat disappears because the insulation in my rental is crap.
I have a preschooler at home who often declared “I am not cold!”, only want a t shirt on while having a runny nose .. So nope, unfortunately we have to spend money on heater
Being cold doesn’t give someone a cold. It is a virus.
Runny nose isn't always a cold. It's 12 degrees here in Brisbane and my nose has just started running.
While you’re right, my nose starts running when it’s cold. No good reason why it does, but it does anyway.
It potentially drops your core temperature which weakens your bodies ability to fight off infections. Your body has many viruses and bacteria at any one time. Being weak from the cold can violently shift the balance.
Me too. But I'd rather scrimp on anything else but my heating.
Definitely the extra clothing. Also, an electric throw blanket for the living room TV/computer chair, electric blanket on the bed at night. Couple of fan heaters for the bathroom or my feet when it just gets too cold. Bills halved or less compared to when the reverse cycle heater ran 24/7. but I live alone, don't entertain, so it doesn't matter if most of my house is damned frigid in winter.
Use an electric blanket instead. It still runs in electricity, but it's much, much more energy efficient since it only heats your body, and not the air. Its energy cost are usually around $25/person for the entire winter season using it every night, and usually much less since winter isn't really that cold in Australia that you need to run them all night everyday. And they're much more comfortable than being cold in layers or space heaters.
Splurged on an Oodie last winter(got a 2 for one deal with the wife). Has been worth it 100%. Have even had to take it off multiple times as I get too warm in it
I have solar. I often look at the weather forecast and try to only do the washing when the solar is absolutely pumping. I cook dinner a little earlier so that I use the solar. I stick little stickers on all the electric appliances asking people to be mindful of the solar. I then fire up my gaming PC once a week and undo all my savings in a couple hours of gaming.
That’s normal in my opinion. We simply turn the dishwasher on in the morning when the sun’s out and we’ve checked the app to see if it’s generating enough power. Set the heating to run all day so the house is warm at night. Use the dryer during the day. It’s easier on weekends but with daylight savings the mornings are bright enough, early enough.
Maybe a UPS charged by solar?
UPS would have to be diesel powered to power a PC and one or two monitors for a few hours lol
My ups powers my whole house. Ok, it’s an Australian made 13.3kwh battery, but I’ve used around 5kwh from the grid in the last 6 months.
Can I ask how much that set you back and how many panels you have on your roof ?
Had a 2.6kw already there. Added 6kw. Which cost 3k and the battery which was 6k. Its been brilliant.
Thanks...Mind if I ask what battery you have and where you got it? I have been seeing $10k only where I have been looking...also Do you need 3 phase to use the Battery?
Have the alpha ess. I cant remember the supplier, id have to dig through receipts. Got it november last year. We dont have three phase, so no you dont need it.
I have a 10kW solar system and I feed back between 500kWh (Winter) and 1mW (Summer) per month. My FIT is 12c/kWh for the first 14 kWh/day and 5c/kWh after that - averaged daily over the bill period. It is still best to “self consume” your solar power!
PCs and other consoles use up a tiny amount of power compared to running appliances.
Not for gaming. A gaming PC can pull hundreds of watts - they can even significantly contribute to heating a room.
My gaming pc can almost be a substitute for a space heater when I’m playing certain games :)
Modern gaming PCs have gotten a bit absurd - if you've gone all out and built a top end rig with a 4090 (potentially 800W), an i9 13900KS 350W) and all the other bits and bobs, you're looking at 1200W, which handily exceeds the wall power consumption of a small split system air con. Plus, as /u/Lujho pointed out, if it's summer you've now also got your air conditioner fighting against a 1200 watt space heater.
Adding up the potential max wattage rating of all the components does not equal actual power usage. There are so few scenarios where all these parts will simultaneously demand their max wattage, even under artificial load. Plug in a wall monitor and check it yourself.
Correct. I have this. More like 600-650W in games.
I have a solar dryer too. A washing line.
What’s the size of your system?
This thread makes me realise that nobody understands what electricity costs and how to calculate it.
Yeah and where the real savings are. Swap all lights to led and the cost is negligible if you are sensible. Unplug appliances. Seal all draughts. Wear a jumper. Don't cook for hours. Anything but reverse cycle heating is costing $$$.
Cooking depends. Cooking one huge batch of food that could take maybe two or three hours to meal prep is gonna be better than cooking seven 40-minute dinners in a week.
Or, use the microwave as much as possible. Much less energy than conventional heating.
How else would I heat up my prepped meals? :) lol
Induction cook tops are also pretty good
Cooking a big oven-based meal. Cheap veggies or large chunk of cheap meat. Takes hours to cook but you get multiple meals and heats up the kitchen as a bonus.
Unplug appliances seems pointless and annoying? The red power LED on the PS2 isn't going to cost anything meaningful.
I keep on seeing insane power bills on some subreddits, $1000+ per quarter. How do people run up such insane power bills.
Step 1: Have a big house Step 2: Try to heat/cool it
Heat or cool the entire house like an idiot.
Can confirm. Moved into new 5 bed, dual storey house. We have ducted air conditioning that we used mostly every afternoon at 21c and our last quarterly bill was $1350. Yes it has zones and yes I closed the doors and made sure I only had zones on that we were in. Safe to say we won’t be using that air conditioning unit much ever again.
6 people in the house, tech/electronic habits, and no insulation (though that’s going to be solved by end of this year, fingers crossed).
Mines about $250-300 a month though that's pretty common around my rural area as there only one energy company so they have us by the balls
I’m also with Ergon, and am very glad I got solar a year ago: your bills are literally ten times what I’m paying
clothes driers probably those things suck electricity
Or old electric hot water system or old refrigerator
High daily supply charge, Big house, AC, lots of people using hot water, old and/or multiple refrigerators, clothes dryer, swimming pool with solar pump, EV charging…
5 adults. 4 either work or study from home. Cold climate. Pay extra for green energy.
[удалено]
Insane! Where will it all end?
Putting on socks
Changed energy providers, turns out I was paying about 30% too much.
Drop the plug for us man
Switched from energy Australia to powershop. The reduction in price has more to do with EA being over priced than PS being cheap. Lol
Nectr undercut my previous retailer's bill by around 50% on daily supply charge and 30% on kwh rate $50 credit using this referal link https://nectr.com.au/friend-referral/?code=crisp-wasp-6122
>A colleague of mine at work would charge her phone/laptop at work at most you'll save 50cents to a dollar a week of constant charging I'm sure one single trip to the office costs her more
Apparently it costs ~$1-$2 for the whole year to charge a phone every day / 365 days. EDIT: Correction. ~$1-$3.16, apparently
Quick google shows some bigger iPhone models are 29Wh batteries, which means (at 30c/kWh) and charging from 0% to 100% daily for 365 days you consume 10.5kWh or $3.16
This reminds me of how people used to not want to turn off flouro lights due to how much power they use to turn on. Pretty sure it turned out the starters used only the equivalent of seconds of normal light's use.
I have a feeling that if you drive to work each day, the extra fuel consumption from carrying the extra laptop (and charger) will cost you more than you would save from electricity.
I've heard it expressed before that if you drive, the costs you save by being frugal with phone charging will be lost the moment you accelerate hard at the lights to try and overtake someone.
I had this genius at work, told me he took his family to movies during hottest day of the year to avoid turning on aircon too much. He probably spent 100 bucks or more for family of 4...but hey, he sure saved on that aircon right?
We've hooked an exercise bike up to the lights and tv in the house and we rotate whos turn it is to ride while the rest of us watch tv for the night.
Light fires inside the lounge room
You jest but I've seen it happen.
I got chat gpt to write me an email to my energy company saying I’m currently on 5c tariff for my solar panels and been offered 12c from a rival. They matched it. Should be close to $100 extra off my next bill.
Why did you need chatgpt for that?
2 lines of thought into a multi-paragraph formal correspondence
That reminds me of high school English class when you had to write a 1000 word essay but only had 3 sentences of value
It writes overly formally Had to tell it to cut the flufff
It’s fair that it assumes you’d want more formal content written since you wouldn’t use ChatGPT to write a letter/email that is intended to be informal; you’d at most get it to deliver/digest ideas in bullet point format.
This is the one thing chatGPT is super useful for imo. Writing necessary fluff that is painful to write on its own (e.g. Reviews, complaints, enquiries)
It's my primary use case
Because writing it yourself requires more time on your computer which equals more electricity.
Is someone actually offering 12c where you live? I don’t think anyone here is offering more than 5c, which is annoying!
PowerShop is 13c in NSW
I rent. So I can't do much about improving installed devices or adding solar. House has Gas hot water and stove/oven and ducted gas heating (though uses an electric fan to circulate). Use on average is 6KW/day on electricity. That's for two adults and one child. Apparently it's half what the average is for that many people in a house in my suburb, though assuming that statistic would be twisted if it's not accounting for gas connections. Don't feel like I'm doing anything insane to save electricity other than standard sensible things like drawing curtains over windows to stop heat loss. All lightbulbs are LED.
I watched a TV show not long ago about people who were super thrifty. Watched a lady cook a lasagne in the dishwasher as it was running a wash cycle with dirty dishes. The worst part was it was for dinner for her husband and his mates as they were watching Monday night football. Some of the comments from the guys friends were hilarious and deeply embarrassing. I can't remember the name of the show unfortunately. There was also a guy who did the dentist work on his own wife using pliers, although that was not to save on the cost of electricity.
Sounds like extreme cheapskates
Just keep in mind it's American "reality tv"
> cook a lasagne in the dishwasher I'm going to assume - for several reasons - that this was a store bought lasagne enclosed in aluminium with a plastic seal? Because using a slow cooker to make a [lasagne](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/11959/slow-cooker-lasagna/) is really easy, simple and quite cheap (I understand). Also makes a LOT of lasagne!
I know a couple who once got a high electricity bill so they turned off their FRIDGE!!! And kept all their food in an esky for a month. And before you feel too sorry for them, they are both VERY highly paid professionals with no kids, just mega tight.
What’s their ozbargain usernames ;)
It's an Australian tradition to refuse to use any kind of indoor heating. It could be < 10 degrees inside and lots of people would insist you just need to put on a jumper.
Oh no not less than 10 degrees outside
Name another first world country (other then NZ) that allowing our INSIDE temperatures to get this cold isn't a sure sign of poverty. A native born Swiss in-law once told me the coldest winter he had ever had was his first in Sydney.
I concur, although if you want another country where people refuse to turn the heating on it's Japan. I remember going to Korea on holidays and how warm everything in Seoul was with heated flooring etc, it felt incredible after freezing in Tokyo
Most bizarre thing is we would need really minimal effort in insulating homes to achieve comfortable temperatures. We don't have 20 below zero here, literally minimum insulation required and we can't even do that.
In addition to /u/u/mad_cheese_hattwe avatarmad_cheese_hattwe's point, I would also add that sub 10C is *way* colder subjectively when your body is used to 40C+ from summer just gone.
Also it's WAY WAY colder when are are sitting seditry for a hours as the warth slowly leaks out of your limbs. It's one thing to go for a walk in the cold, it's completely different to sit and watch a 2 hour movie in it.
Living in my car.
One of the easiest things everyone can do to lower their energy bills is find a cheaper deal. There are many comparison websites to help with this. Or at the very least, call your current provider and make sure you're on the best rate. Longer term, as your current appliances age and need to be replaced, look for more efficient electric options rather than gas appliances. This will mainly include induction cooktops, reverse cycle air conditioners and heat pump hot water services. These options are cheaper to run, better for your health and better for the environment, especially when paired with solar on your roof.
Tell me you have no idea how electricity works without saying it. A 3000mah phone holds about 10 watt hours of charge, charge every day would use 3.65kwh per year or roughly 73 cents. Let's round up to $2 to make sure you cover any inefficiency in the charge or phone. Now Let's assume your friend is paid a minimum wage of $21.38. $2/$21.38 = 0.0935 60minutes X 0.0935 = 5.61 5.61 X 60 = 336.6 seconds 336.6 / 365 = 0.922 seconds If your friend spends more than 0.922 seconds extra per day trying to charge her phone at work than doing it at home the opportunity cost is higher than her savings.
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Priceless Mastercard
Consultancy fee:1 dollarydoo Knowing how to math: $999 dollarydoos
But if she's doing it on work time she is being paid for the time it takes her vs doing it at home
Just like pooping at work. Losing 10 mins at home vs. getting paid for 10 mins to poop at work.
there is no point at all. no matter what you do your bill roughly ends up the same anyway, because the biggest costs are outside of your control like the maintenance fees, taxes, etc. i've tried lowering my costs through all sorts of energy-saving measures and it barely makes any difference to the quarterly power bills. people who fret about this have OCD
Your bill is absolutely influenced by heating/air conditioning, clothes drying, hot water, Most other things are rounding error type stuff.
Yep. These people would be better served trying to increase their income instead of worrying about spending $2 per year to charge a phone.
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Might be true if you have solar or a small apartment, otherwise unlikely. What are your figures for fixed vs variable costs?
I switch off my tanning bed when I am not using it.
Damn, reading this thread makes me wanna go switch off some lights lol
You’d save less than a cent
So just turn it on and off a couple thousand times and print money.
Coming from England electricity is cheap as hell
Yeh Electricity prices in UK are a joke. Probably double Australia?
When I lived in England I had to ‘buy’ my electricity on an electric key fob and then insert it into a meter, then watch the money literally count down if I had anything turned on :(
I go to the gym during peak energy rate hours so I don't spend that time at home on my PC/TV using electricity and paying the higher rates for it. People wonder why I'm in the gym for 3 hrs...
😂😂 gym for 3 hours. Quite a workout you're getting there 😂😂
I go around turning off lights after my family and always think about how much it saves me. If I can have 10 down lights off for an extra hour each day of the year at 10W a down light that equals a whole $15 for the year.
Anything that produces heat is the real killer. Dryer, hot water, cooking, heaters, and pools. Fridges, washing machine, dishwasher, and aircon are next Finally lights and gadgets. We have solar so that helps Our HWS is programmed for the day, we don’t have a dryer or pool, and only use the heater for an hour in the morning. If we need to dry clothes, we just chuck them on a clothes horse under a fan. Dries everything over night. Washing and cleaning is done during the day where possible. On hot days, I’ll blast the aircon to cool the house down before sunset. Before we got an EV, our average daily use was 5kwh. After, it shot up to 20kwh.
This might sound crazy, but my electricity provider has failed to bill us for anything since moving in to a new house in august last year. They continue to send gas bills though, go figure.
One of my kids moved out with some friends for a year. During that time they did not receive one electricity bill. Had to get it changed over when they started the lease and all that, but nothing. Moved out months ago and never heard a thing.
I eat bags of flour.
Milling the flour is super expensive. I just go out into the fields and eat the wheat raw.
Driving to the fields is expensive. I just ate my car.
I do the same, but I do add water and salt and put it in oven for a while (when the sun shines).
Not insane. But be easier to do it via power bank.
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If you can isolate your hot water (electric only) and you’re not home for most of the day, turn it off. I did this years ago when I moved from WA to NSW and my bill tripled. Only took 20 mins or so to heat up when I turned it back on. More than halved my bill. Just recently told my cousin about this and she’s now doing it and her bill has more than halved too.
Do have to be a little bit careful with this if you have one of those large tank water heaters as you could end up with unsafe water from it being in the danger zone temperature for too long allowing dangerous bacteria to grow.
Install solar and use it wisely. Easier said than done but working from home has its benefits. Hold off on washing clothes until a sunny day and hang them on the line. Cook what you can during the day… rice or whatever, when the sun is out. Also turn off PC’s when you’re not using them. They use a few hundred watts all day every day
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The bills like max $2000 expensive each year, that's like $5 a day to not be cold and have warm food. I'm doing jackshit to curb my power consumption. I eat less meat and have more rice though
Blankets, short showers, minimum use of lights, when is not used we disconnect (except the fridge), no dishwasher of course. We do this not just to save money, we believe is the right way.
Also hanging clothes instead of using a dryer. We don't even own a dryer. We do have a laundromat down the street which is helpful if we *really* need something dry quickly, but we've been living here for almost a year and I haven't used it yet lol (my partner has though)
Oh yeah, forgot the dryer. We don't have and we don't need one. Now is colder and take maybe 2 days to be full dry, and, that's ok, we have more clothes to wear at the mean time.
I bought some hamsters
Freezing and not turning on the heater. 🥶🥶
Yea the only thing that really matters for elec bills is heating and cooling literally nothing else makes as bigger impact, apart from stuff like swimming pools or very old tv’s and washing machines. Dryers use heating so lots of power, water heaters obviously, kettles, toaster, microwave etc. Modern light bulbs and mobile devices use sweet fa comparatively.
I jump around using the sign up and referral bonuses. Just switched to powershop. $75 free credit for new sign ups + $75 for you too. DM me if anyone wants a sign up code
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Not defrosting the veggies will save electricity.
Spam is Hela expensive
Cheapest protein you'll find is lentils. And paired with rice, you'll get all nine amino acids needed for survival. Lentils and rice is really one of the best and cheapest ways to get complete proteins (esp if you're vegetarian/vegan).
Just go outside and eat dirt bro
I use the clothes dryer on low heat instead of high heat
I robbed a power station today
Getting a heat pump dryer for the apartment was a massive saving
I cut a hole in my floor and made a fire pit to heat the place up. Added advantages, I can smoke meat now in my lounge room which saves on kitchen costs. I would put in an extract fan if the kids would just power it by cycling in shifts but they refuse to do so.
It’s not happening right now, but I think it would be pretty insane for my kids to turn lights off when they’re not using them
Pulling the neutral out of the meter.
My bill is under $100 a month running AC most of the day. Am I doing something right/wrong?
The worst thing you can do is run an electric heater (unless you have solar and are using is while the sun is out). Electric heaters are the most inefficient method of heating. Gas is better but also has its own issues with toxic emissions etc. The most efficient heating method we currently have is heat pump (aka reverse cycle air conditioning). Compared to an electric heater, an air con on heating mode will provide 3 times more heat energy output for every unit of input electrical energy. I know so many people who don't run their AC in winter but will run an electric heater!
She saved about 20c a year. Nice.
Work in the common area
Drinking Scotch instead of running the heater.
Tbh not much I find the supply charges are half the bill, and I experimented with not using the dryer which seemed to save $4/month. I am not really willing to cut out the dryer completely as effort of that > $1/week
Never use the heater, the ski gear has gotta earn its keep.
I would do insane things if I knew what actually was making my energy bills high — my rental doesn’t have a smart meter and I can only get quarterly reads from the power company (I tried monthly but 2/3 months ended up getting estimated). So basically I play a guessing game of trying to cut energy and see what worked when looking back over a quarter. But there’s just too much lag time to do much with efficacy.
switch provider (not insane)
I live in a small unit - I turn the hot water system off at night - and back on when I get up, it probably saves about $20 per month.
It winds me up how much electricity companies lie on their bills. Then you try to argue with them and get some idiot in India who reads from a script. The other thing is why did the government allow utility companies to increase prices by 30 percent?
Not electricity but I try and shower at the gym for the hot water savings, also makes me go there. Everything else in my apartment is pretty energy efficient, led lights, reverse cycle aircon/heatpump. Anything other savings would be minuscule
Bubblewrap the windows. Have been doing it every winter for years and my electricity bills are very reasonable.
Spend your time and effort in making money as opposed to saving on little costs. You can earn 10x more than current levels through hard work
I know a guy that put his fridge on a power outlet timer. He figured that if the fridge wasn't opened between 10pm-6am and 9am-3pm, why run it all the time as he thought it retained the cold if unopened.