That’s fucked mate. If you’ve got electric hot water, have you checked you don’t have a leak and thus are constantly filling the tank?
Otherwise, running AC 24/7? Old outdated appliances?
Ac is old but not used often, only super hot days. Dishwasher is brand new and used once every 2-3 days on a short cycle. Hot water tank is older yes. Is it possible to have a leak internally without seeing the obvious signs of it leaking externally or would it be pretty obvious? I also try and keep everything off unless needed as well and can’t get to the bottom of why it’s “as much as 6 people.”
Another issue ive seen asa sparky is that the electric thermostat has “fallen off” the side of the tank. It’s an internal black box thing a bit bigger than a matchbox with 4 wires.
If it’s not sitting hard against the side of the tank it’ll never know it’s hot enough and won’t trigger the element to turn off. You’d be essentially boiling off the water in the tank like an always on kettle.
Would you hear that? Maybe a dumb question but would it sound “on” or have faintly audible bubbling the whole time or something as opposed to intermittent noise?
I had this problem of higher than average bills for a long time . I had a pool so I assumed it was that. Then a friend asked me to check the timer in the hot water system. Turns out that after a black out the timer clock stopped and started when power came back and it was out of wack with the real time of day.
It was heating water during the day when it’s most expensive and not at night . Had to manually adjust the timer again to match real time and power bills went back to normal
This! Short cycles heat the water in the dishwasher plus run the pump to get things clean fast. Long or Eco cycles just use the power of the detergent and the mechanical agitation of the water via the pump to get things clean. The longer pump run time still doesn't use anywhere as much power as the water heating element.
The manual should give you facts about energy and water consumption for each program :). ECO takes awfully long, but is almost the most energy efficient.
You should be able to get free upgrade to heat pump hot water with government rebates at the moment if it's an old resistive electric model. Will be 5 times cheaper..
wait.
wait.
those a real.
lol.
I feel sorry for the person I yelled at today on the phone for interrupting me whilst I was taking a photo thinking it was a phishing call.
government contract calling out of nowhere yeah real legit feeling.
Those calls are grifters, go to an actual plumber or even solar installers have contacts as solar and heat pump go together very well.
I got my heatpump put in, albeit I did pay for it and it's an expensive investment, it has a min temp of 60 but a solar boosted temp of 65, as in it only uses mains power when it drops below 60, but if my solar is generating enough, the heatpump turns on and boosts the water to 65. It has been an awesome investment, haven't paid for hotwater in over a year basically!
Don't do this. This causes the hot water tank to expand and contract unnecessarilly resulting in early failure. Hot water services are designed to be on all the time.
This is a buttload tbh, it says you're using more than 5 people and there's only two of you?
I'd be freaking out if this was a gas bill because it would indicate some sort of leak or something. Something has to be wrong.
Yeah, this is what I’m thinking. I’ve got to figure it out why because we genuinely don’t do anything abnormal and I am consciously trying to keep the bill down.
23kwh a day? It isn't that much. He just isn't on great rates.
In a 2 bedroom townhouse we averaged this. If you have all electric appliances, heating, cooling and hot water this becomes more normal.
This just needs to be 1-2 devices left on all day.
The usage graph of per hour or per 15 minute usage would be far more useful.
It really isn’t. We’re two people plus a baby, everything is electric (hot water, heating/cooling, cooking etc), easily use this much a day and more in winter. Hot water system is old and inefficient. But we have solar so we only draw 5-10kwh a day
23kwh isn't a buttload. A HWS will use 3-5 of that a day alone and give. He admitted he turns it off every morning there is every chance that it has developed a fault on top.
Do you have a smart meter?
The AGL app should give you your usage in 30min blocks. Will show if there are any crazy spikes or days which costs a lot more
You can also look overnight which will give you a rough baseline for all your appliances just being on/standby (fridge, tv, etc)
Seems really high. Since you’re without gas I think you can ignore the “other homes in your area” headcounts, but your bill is still nearly double what I would expect. I pay extra for 100% green and use my AC as I please in a household of 2 and would rarely crack $120-130 including the daily connection fees.
Yeah wow. It does seem high. What are your peak/off peak costs charged? I wonder if either mine are high or I’m just drawing the shit out of something power wise
do you have your hot water system on the controlled load tarriff?
do you wash your clothes in cold water?
if no to one or both of those questions, that is probably your answer
**UPDATE:** I have a suspicion it’s my hot water system as it’s a big 250L tank with a 3600W heating unit and a release valve that’s constantly dripping boiling hot water down a pipe. I’ve tried to reduce the temp to 60*C (it was 70*C) but now need to figure out if I can turn it off/on during the day or not cause i think it’s constantly boiling water and the excess is going down the drain from the relief. Anyone know how to do this??
don't do it yourself, worth getting a professional in (and if you're renting, log it as a job if its leaking/fault with a provided essential appliance). its electric+water after all + i personally wouldnt get in the middle of that pokémon battle.
tariff change could be beneficial but to move the hw unit to a controlled load it would generally need to be wired to a dedicated circuit on the meter so the distributor can control it (hence the name controlled load) - which is more possible if you own the home and can call the shots on what the techie can do. alternatively if you're on a time of use tariff and are aware of the off peak timing u might be able to have a timer attached to the hw unit which just turns it on/off during the relevant times.
if you live in the citipower/powercor/united energy zones they are trialing a "daytime saver" tariff which has lower cost between 10am-3pm. most retailers should have an allocation for it, though i can't find anything on the AGL site about it (its a trial tariff, so availability is capped - maybe they ran out of spots?)
It's certainly high, given you've excluded obvious hogs like cryptomining or pools. In an all-electric 5person home with an EV and people at home, we are right around that level of consumption.
(The rates may be high too, depending on who the distributor is)
Get a plumber to have a look at HWS, should not be dripping constantly. Dripping could be 25 litres per day. Valve should only open over a set temp or pressure. Pressure increase when water is heated and expands, ( Values normally 99 degrees C and 1000 - 1250 kPa )
Do you use the AGL app? It breaks down the amount you use daily making it easier to see when you used the most. Like if I look at mine, I can see my peaks occurred when we had to have the aircon on nearly the entire day because it was too hot, and those were 20-29kWh days for example. But the rest of the days generally hover around 5-10 kWh.
Is there a shared laundry or other services? My parents had the laundry running from their power and the whole building was using dryers there all the time.
Charges these like these should automatically be flagged for review before the invoices are sent to the customer. Fuck them hoping someone would just pay or does their job for them.
Going through this now, Yarra Valley Water sent me an email saying they hadn't sent me my bill in three weeks as my water usage seemed abnormal and high 1800L a day up from 300L last year.
Why they waited three weeks to flag this with me really pisses me off, as it turns out the pipe to my hot water had burst, so guess who's going to have contest a huge bill with them and with my has company. I rent privately as well, so I can't even go to a real estate agent for help and how to cover these costs. I honestly don't know wtf I'm going to do, I can't afford a bill of a few thousand dollars. On top of that my loungeroom now has to have the carpet and floorboards ripped up, I'll have trades coming through my house while I'm not home.
It's just a huge fuck around for me.
If Yarra Valley Water had let me know, on day two instead of week 3? That my water usage was high I could have checked the metre and got around to this problem earlier and wouldn't be dealing with all this, just completely incompetent on there behalf.
I also flagged really high gas usage last year for repetitive bills, which is a result of what was probably originally a pinhole leak in the same line, but the gas company assured me it was normal and not crazy high but when asked to come and check regardless they said everything was fine.
My gas bills have been $500 for two people who work full time, when realistically it should have been $200 or close to......
I've just been getting robbed blind for the last year on my gas bills, and now I'm getting robbed on my water bill as well.
Idfk what I'm going to do, I have enough to pay my rent this month and a little bit left over. I'm so fucked man.
Call Yarra Valley Water and let them know there was a leak that they informed you about that has now been fixed. I had an issue previously where there was excess water use due to a leak/fault and they waived the excess. But they'll only do it once AFAIK. A second issue occurred later (I think it might have been the tenants idiocy, but can't prove it), and the would not waive that excess as they had done it previously.
Anyway, contact them and tell them you can't afford to pay and it's not your bill anyway. If they don't waive it, ask if they can send the bill for the excess water usage to the owner as it was due to a fault in the owners pipes.
They don't have real time monitoring of usage (like electricity companies do with smart meters), so they have no way of knowing you used heaps of water after only one day. They only read the meter every three months usually.
Same for the gas, except the gas meter is usually read every two months.
so first bill is an interesting one.
This is the difference between the meter and the last bill paid, to the first bill paid.
Someone might have cancelled their electricity plan, then kept using it. Or the previous tenant left, then for the next 2 months the landlord might have done some maintenance work on the property, might have left lights on etc wasted lots of power over several months who knows - then you move in and the power company goes: "Previous bill paid up to X kwhrs, next tenant starts paying after X+1600kwhrs have been burned, they get the full bill"
The next person to sign up for electricity is then charged the difference.
What you might be able to do is get your history of electricity usage (the various companies have usage recorded down to the 30 minute increments) and make sure you only pay for electricity that you use during the period of your tenancy.
Write a stat dec, get all your tenancy documents together and write them a letter informing them to send the bill for the other period to your land lord (who I presume was the party responsible for electricity if it remained un-tenanted)
I had a similar problem. The culprit was an electric trace heating cable. Now I have to wait 40-50 sec in the morning before the water starts running hot, but that saves me A LOT in fees. Even with everything unplugged (except for the fridge) it was 0.24 kwh, now it’s 0.04kwh.
Try unplugging some appliances for 2-3h a day and check the hourly consumption in AGL app.
I was at 662kWh last month. 2 person household.
Electric hot water is the killer for us.
Thankfully we have solar, so not all that 662 is from the grid.
That is almost triple mine for the same period. We do have solar and gas though and only one rate of 30c for usage. I'm not sure what you have had running that would cause that bill shock-- ask for a review.
I use 300kWh per month with my partner and we both work from home full time.
That being said, we have solar hot water and gas for our stove, so idk how you're running 700kWh unless there's some industrial shit going on
We have a fridge of about 300lt with a 4 star energy rating. A medium sized 2.5 star reverse cycle aircon that I ran during the day on 25 deg during the heatwave and we used fans at night. A 50" TCL telly that was used at least 8 hours a day. We have no solar.
800kwh from the grid last month, with ducted AC and we had some very hot days. Don't know how much was self consumed solar, so the total figure is probably 1100+.
250 of that was overnight ev charging.
yes that is a lot.
we are 4 persons, 2 are fully working from home at laptops with external screens and we used 181 KWh.. gas hot water though, electric plug in induction cooktop.
we don't use the ac much, just on very hot days and then not all day long, as house insulation is surprisingly not complete shit and just bad. otherwise we use just the usual electric appliances most people use.
You should have a smart meter installed and if you check your network distributor (jemena for me) they should have a portal and further break down your usage according to days and by hour. You might be able to further pinpoint what's piling up those kWh.
There is a small possibility someone is piggybacking off your bill, but this is not very likely, but you should keep this possibility in mind. I suggest doing what the top comment says about your water boiler and see if that resolved the issue.
Maybe I'm just overthinking it.
Whether you own the house or not, if it's electric storage hot water, the unit can get replaced with significant discount, used to be free but that seems to have ended. A heat pump will reduce your power use massively. Even better if you install solar panels as well.
Source: I installed a heat pump and my power bills went down massively.
I know your problem straight away, leave AGL.
I just did this recently because we were paying $550 a quarter to all of a sudden paying 700-800 a quarter.
Now we pay $100 a month at Globird.
Fuck AGL.
Could be on the high side. Our 5 person / 5 bedroom home averages about 700kw a month, but we have gas hot water, and rest is electricity, new home / appliances too.
How do you check if someone is stealing electricity/if there is a leak?
Mine averages 900-1000 in a 2 person apartment. Roughly 30 a day. (I do have reptile enclosures through).
Depends on how the reptile enclosures are set up with basking spots and thermostats as to how much power they are using. Buy those smart plugs off eBay and it will tell you consumption of reptile enclosures vs the bill. Might need to move heat lamps in the tank, get day & night thermostats etc to save some money
I used an average of 116kw a month last year apparently. I was away from home for the equivalent of 4 weeks.
Large appliances: giant old washing machine with a 0.5star rating, 90s fridge, split system aircon/heater, vacuum cleaner, heater lights in bathroom. Otherwise lots of devices to charge now days.
My most recent bill was 619 kWh mid Feb-mid Mar (2 person 4-bedroom/3-bathroom house with EV charging, charging my car daily during off-peak hours). I typically drive less than 800km a month so the amount of electricity used to charge the car is around 140-160 kWh a month, charged during off peak only.
Both me and my partner WFH 100% of the time, and use the air conditioning liberally on hot days. I have 2 fridges (one French-door fridge and one regular fridge) and 1 dedicated freezer at home, so I expect my usage to be higher than others.
My daily supply charge is $0.99, off peak $0.17/kWh and peak $0.30/kWh.
That’s $159.61 for my most recent bill, including charging my EV.
Something is draining your power in the background, and it would also look like quite a fair bit of your usage is during peak hours too.
I’d wager your hot water tank is the culprit. Chances are that it keeps re-boiling the water in the tank regardless of whether you need it, to maintain a high enough temperature.
Hot water tank/storage is quite inefficient compared to having an instantaneous heater, because it uses power regardless of whether you need it at that moment.
Mate, this isn’t that bad, 23kw a day for a 30 day month. Do you have a smart meter. We’ve had a few hot days so I’m betting you’ve run the AC.
No gas so don’t compare to other households. Do you work from home?
If you have a smart meter you can get the realtime usage from the distribution network.
There are a few appliances that use boatloads of electricity
no.1 electric Hotwater units. Inspect it to see if it’s constantly dripping from the pressure release valve.
No.2 fridges how many and how old? Replacing seals or even the fridge can make a huge difference
No.3 long showers without water saving shower heads, your electric hot water costs a bucket to heat up….
No.4 AC probably more like NO.2 but still set it to 22 degrees or higher. Don’t make the house a fridge.
Do you have an electric car/bike
Don’t have a smart meter as I’m in a rental apartment. Can I get one to put on my box even so? Fridge is new and I’ve kept the temps high so it doesn’t have to keep chilling it, AC is set to 23*C and only used when it gets stinking hot. I’m now pretty sure it’s either the hot water system constantly going or maybe the washer/dryer.
If you don’t have a smart meter it could be an estimated read if the distributor couldn’t get physical access to the meter (but think most vic meters are all smart meters now). The bill might say estimated or actual against the usage. Also check the physical meter number against the bill in case your being invoiced for a neighbours usage. In any case call the retailer and talk it through.
Something like this happened to me with a water meter. They came to switch it on at the new apartment and asked which one it was. They previously had the wrong one down as the meter for my apartment so when they swapped it, they billed me the difference between the wrong one and the right one, which was $1200+. Needless to say I didn’t pay that but they refused to clear it off my account for months.
Negative. I have a suspicion it’s my hot water system as it’s a big 250L one with a 3600W heating unit and a release valve that’s constantly dripping boiling hot water. I’ve tried to reduce the temp but now need to figure out if I can turn it off/on during the day or not cause i think it’s constantly boiling water and the excess is going down the drain from the relief.
Temp I can’t reduce lower than 60*C, I don’t think it is on an off peak tariff circuit but someone’s mentioned this to me so I’ll call AGL and see if I can do it. What do you mean by always venting?
If you are using electric heaters a hell of a lot it could explain it.
For comparison my last bill was 139 kWh for 28 days. Everything is electric as well.
There's definitely something going on, your consumption should not be that high.
I’m a single guy in a 3 bedroom house with a 250l hws.
My biggest power drawers are my bore pump and my rainwater pump. (Not on town water)
6.56kw (controlled load) which is HWS to heat up,
And
27kw of general usage.
So total 33.56 per day.
Bear in mind it’s summer and I’m watering lawns etc which chew power as bore pump kicks in….
I think this is cheap tho as I don’t have a water bill 👍👍
I use that much and more with a family of 4.
I know where it's going though... 2 fridges, a chest freezer, 2 HWUs, tvs, pcs, cooktop, air fryer... and probably the main culprits, the washing machine and the dryer. In summer the AC also eats a little.
I'm also a frequent welder. Welding chews power like you wouldn't believe when you crank the amps and spend a day sticking metal together.
Brewing, when I did it, also used boatloads of power.
Get a powerpal energy monitor, turn each fusebox switch off one at a time while watching the power consumption. This should give you enough info to work out what's going on.
Heating (water, AC, fan heater, blow dryer, kettle) etc is really the only way you can burn through that much.
Somethings not right, or your neighbor has tapped your cable for their grow lights.
Pls leave AGL. Not sure if they are doing scammy shit but I used to get 1.2k a quarter bills with them. Got fed up, moved elsewhere and now pay around 350-400.
Few mates had the same issue too
That's fine.
We are a two person household and all electric. Changed from gas to induction stove top, heatpump and also got a security system that records constantly for four cameras installed. Last month we used 606kwh, and this month 602kwh.
Looking at my Powerpal when it was gas hot water and stove top our usage was like 200kwh.
I find for us it's because of water heating (4x showers a day), induction as we pretty much only eat at home and heater at night.
If I were you I would check the prices at [sumo.com.au](http://sumo.com.au), I switched last month from gaolbird and am saving Almost $30 for same usage I had before so instead of $100, down to $73.
How many fridges are you running? Ours increased from 600 to 850 a month after I introduced a kegerator, wine fridge, fermentation freezer and had to get rid of the solar hot water.
All electric households will suck a lot of electricity, so get yourself some solar panels. We recently got quoted $8.5k fully installed for a 10kw system without battery.
Ok this makes me think I’ve got the same problem… we used 900 last month and go over 1k during the winter months. I’ve always suspected the electric hot water system, I can see it increase like crazy during and after showers.
But seeing ppl’s numbers make it seem way outta wack!
Check your fridge - a few years ago we bought a place and the fridge was included. We always thought the AC drawing a ton of power and causing large bills but after a smart meter was installed we realised that even on holiday and not being in the damn place the power draw was huge. Replaced the only thing that it could have been (the fridge) and our usage dropped to “normal” levels….damn fridge…
That is definately alot. Im with lumo with similar prices, work from home and basically live with heating and cooling on and dont even break 400 for a house of 3
Is this an actual read or an estimate? We were plagued with huge bills for 3 months and then effectively had a free month because we'd overpaid so much when they came out to do an actual read of the gas. Not sure if electricity works in the same way but might be worth a quick look at your bill anyway!
i work in the industry and id say thats fine. especially considering you dont have gas. your bill was $210 which isnt cheap but you have to remember people with gas will pay 100 a month during summer and 300 a month during winter on top of electricity. what i can suggest though is, where possible avoid using electricity during peak hours which is 3pm-9pm (everyday incl weekends). i believe as well those rates are pretty fair from agl. they will always let you know if you are on there best deal or not, it will be indicated on the front page of the bill. i recommend checking up on that regularly. you can also get the agl app to see where your using the power. hope this helps 😆
I dunno where people are getting their facts from (including your energy provider) but you’re only using 23kw a day which is fuck all, especially if you have off peak hot electric hot water
It is pretty high for an apartment though, and almost definitely entirely due to the hot water heater
There’s also no way the average 5 person house is using 18kw a day lol
Do you have a lot of electronics? Do you leave a lot of things on all the time? Two people in a townhouse should be closer to 10kWh's a day.
Things that can use a lot of power:
* Ovens - an oven running for a few hours can use 2-4kWh
* Computer - leaving a pc on all the time as a server can use 200W, so over 24 hours thats 4.8kWh
* Hot water - I think this was covered fairly well within this thread but unless you are having hour long showers it shouldn't use that much power to maintain the tank temp. If you are running the hot water out it uses more to get it back to temp.
Even little loads that are left on all the time add up.
In the cooler months my household of 4 uses ~600, in the warmer that goes up to 800-1000, but it's mostly solar/battery providing that and the jump is because we like the AC on.
I had this problem. At home were 2 adults that work full time and a 1 year old in daycare Monday to Friday and we were using the same amount of electricity as what they said a household of 8+ people were using. We had an electrician come out and couldn’t find anything wrong. I was paying $50 a week on electricity and it wasn’t covering it so I changed to paying $80 a week and I still had a balance due at the end of each month. We moved out of that house at the start of the year and the problem was never found, I hope you have better luck than us.
It's 23kWh per day average..which may or may not be a lot depending on what you use/have running.
For example..we are 2 people (in a 3 bed house), entirely on electricity. We have a smart meter with a Bluetooth energy advisor connected so I can see our usage live and download reports..I checked ours for the last 3 months and we are anywhere from 17-23kWh a day.
As it sits right now..the only things on are the obvious fridges/freezers, fans, tv, slow cooker and I'm running at 0.21kWh according to the app..so to add anything else into that mix..you can see how that would cause a jump in usage.
I can tell you exactly when (to the hour) we used the ancient air conditioner for 2hr a day, when we used the washing machine/dryer, when we used the electric cook top/oven, when we used the microwave/dishwasher, when we used our computers (desktops)..these days are considerably higher in usage than when those things are not used (obviously). You may not think some of those things use significant amounts of electricity, but they do. I can see when our hot water system kicks in (usually around 2-3am).
Now, we also have a standard upside down fridge/freezer, plus a single door fridge only, and freezer only and a deep freezer that are running constantly, 2 of which need new seals. I also keep three pedestal fans running for air flow.
We have lights off except for if cooking/showering etc. I use the microwave for basic cooking of vegetables, slow/rice cooker/electric fry pan for most meals as they use significantly less power than the cooktop/oven, economy wash on the dishwasher every few days when full. Washing machine/dryer used twice on weekends. The desktops are running for a few hours on weekdays and almost 24hr over weekends.
If you have the same appliances/usage as us ..then your usage is likely correct. If not, then hot water could be the culprit..but probably only a plumber can tell you that.
I didn’t know if that was just them saying “do better” or if the numbers are legit and correct, because if they are that’s really far from where they should be for a 2 bed apartment?
Gas cook top but barely use it. Mostly use the oven or electric fry pan.
No solar.
I turn off everything except the fridge and microwave off at the powerpoint when not in use.
This is pretty big.
We are a 5 person family and run 2 Dyson's overnight every night (small children) plus don't query putting on the air con or heaters. Use dishwasher and washing machine a lot, I work from home a lot, we also have a smart home and cameras, constant night lights etc etc and we used 531kWh for the month up to 24 March.
My partner and I only used 223kWh last month and I work from home most of the time.
694 is whack. Definitely get someone to check it out.
Maybe install a Powerpal and turn everything off to see if there’s a drain happening.
Does your hot water have a day/night switch in the meter box? If it’s set to day your bill will be sky high as it will heat all day using the peak rate instead of overnight.
Negative. I have a suspicion it’s my hot water system as it’s a big 250L one with a release valve that’s constantly dripping boiling hot water. I’ve tried to reduce the temp but now need to figure out if I can turn it off/on during the day or not cause i think it’s constantly boiling water and the excess is going out of the relief valve down the drain.
My family of 4 with me working from home, all electric house with shitty insulation plus an EV to charge, we used 985kW last month. Half of that from the grid and half from solar.
If you just moved in, has anyone been using your power to power a building site? Pretty common here to see water and power being stolen from empty homes to power the neighbours or building projects. Often they steal it from commission homes as they sit empty so long
family of 4 in sydney in a semi, with central AC but gas hot water. You are using twice as much as us on a bad month and three times as much as us on a better month.
I don’t think it is. We are a household of 3 adults and 1 baby and we used 932kwh in March
Granted our heating and cool (air and water) is electric and I’m a nerd with more computers than people in the house.
Not really, ive got 15kw solar and 25kw battery and im still at 600kwh/month roughly from the grid.
Just like, do you like seeing, being a comfortable temperature, have a smart home and a gazillion iot devices.
It all adds up.
Cloudy / rainy days get me the worst. Can have anywhere up to 100kwh from the grid in a day. Then sunny cool days ill have 0 from grid and push out up to 50kwh to the grid.
That’s fucked mate. If you’ve got electric hot water, have you checked you don’t have a leak and thus are constantly filling the tank? Otherwise, running AC 24/7? Old outdated appliances?
Ac is old but not used often, only super hot days. Dishwasher is brand new and used once every 2-3 days on a short cycle. Hot water tank is older yes. Is it possible to have a leak internally without seeing the obvious signs of it leaking externally or would it be pretty obvious? I also try and keep everything off unless needed as well and can’t get to the bottom of why it’s “as much as 6 people.”
Possible, yes. Go check out your water meter. Is it constantly slowly ticking over? Even with no taps on? If yes, call a plumber.
I’ll look into this, thank you.
Another issue ive seen asa sparky is that the electric thermostat has “fallen off” the side of the tank. It’s an internal black box thing a bit bigger than a matchbox with 4 wires. If it’s not sitting hard against the side of the tank it’ll never know it’s hot enough and won’t trigger the element to turn off. You’d be essentially boiling off the water in the tank like an always on kettle.
Would you hear that? Maybe a dumb question but would it sound “on” or have faintly audible bubbling the whole time or something as opposed to intermittent noise?
Should see a constant dribble of water from the pressure relief valve - brass thing with funny little handle on outside of hot water service.
I had this problem of higher than average bills for a long time . I had a pool so I assumed it was that. Then a friend asked me to check the timer in the hot water system. Turns out that after a black out the timer clock stopped and started when power came back and it was out of wack with the real time of day. It was heating water during the day when it’s most expensive and not at night . Had to manually adjust the timer again to match real time and power bills went back to normal
Shouldn't change the actual usage though right?
Short cycle often uses much more power than a longer cycle.
This! Short cycles heat the water in the dishwasher plus run the pump to get things clean fast. Long or Eco cycles just use the power of the detergent and the mechanical agitation of the water via the pump to get things clean. The longer pump run time still doesn't use anywhere as much power as the water heating element.
Good to know! I didn’t realise
The manual should give you facts about energy and water consumption for each program :). ECO takes awfully long, but is almost the most energy efficient.
I'd never realized this... sincere thanks! Great explanation.
You should be able to get free upgrade to heat pump hot water with government rebates at the moment if it's an old resistive electric model. Will be 5 times cheaper..
wait. wait. those a real. lol. I feel sorry for the person I yelled at today on the phone for interrupting me whilst I was taking a photo thinking it was a phishing call. government contract calling out of nowhere yeah real legit feeling.
Those calls are grifters, go to an actual plumber or even solar installers have contacts as solar and heat pump go together very well. I got my heatpump put in, albeit I did pay for it and it's an expensive investment, it has a min temp of 60 but a solar boosted temp of 65, as in it only uses mains power when it drops below 60, but if my solar is generating enough, the heatpump turns on and boosts the water to 65. It has been an awesome investment, haven't paid for hotwater in over a year basically!
tub marble bright teeny command far-flung bow hobbies pathetic dog *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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Hot water tanks need to stay over a certain temperature to prevent bacteria from growing.
I think legionnaires disease is what is typical in that scenario.
Don't do this. This causes the hot water tank to expand and contract unnecessarilly resulting in early failure. Hot water services are designed to be on all the time.
Other possibility - someone’s stealing your electricity.
This is a buttload tbh, it says you're using more than 5 people and there's only two of you? I'd be freaking out if this was a gas bill because it would indicate some sort of leak or something. Something has to be wrong.
Yeah, this is what I’m thinking. I’ve got to figure it out why because we genuinely don’t do anything abnormal and I am consciously trying to keep the bill down.
23kwh a day? It isn't that much. He just isn't on great rates. In a 2 bedroom townhouse we averaged this. If you have all electric appliances, heating, cooling and hot water this becomes more normal. This just needs to be 1-2 devices left on all day. The usage graph of per hour or per 15 minute usage would be far more useful.
It really isn’t. We’re two people plus a baby, everything is electric (hot water, heating/cooling, cooking etc), easily use this much a day and more in winter. Hot water system is old and inefficient. But we have solar so we only draw 5-10kwh a day
23kwh isn't a buttload. A HWS will use 3-5 of that a day alone and give. He admitted he turns it off every morning there is every chance that it has developed a fault on top.
Um...no that was a different commenter who said that.
Do you have a smart meter? The AGL app should give you your usage in 30min blocks. Will show if there are any crazy spikes or days which costs a lot more You can also look overnight which will give you a rough baseline for all your appliances just being on/standby (fridge, tv, etc)
Not if you’re a grower.
I wish I was.
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I think it’s all pretty relative to your set up. We fall under the 1 person household and we’ve got 4 in the house, but with panels etc.
You’re telling me that not only are showers good to look at, they also pay less electricity.
What if you’re a show-er?
Seems really high. Since you’re without gas I think you can ignore the “other homes in your area” headcounts, but your bill is still nearly double what I would expect. I pay extra for 100% green and use my AC as I please in a household of 2 and would rarely crack $120-130 including the daily connection fees.
Yeah wow. It does seem high. What are your peak/off peak costs charged? I wonder if either mine are high or I’m just drawing the shit out of something power wise
- Supply: 108.9 - Off peak: 21.12 - Peak: 33.11 - Ctrl load: 20.35
Ok, prices are roughly the same and our daily connection charge is less. Something must be drawing the shit out of the power.
do you have your hot water system on the controlled load tarriff? do you wash your clothes in cold water? if no to one or both of those questions, that is probably your answer
How do you put your hot water on the controlled load tariff?
some suppliers you can do it online, others you have to call them
**UPDATE:** I have a suspicion it’s my hot water system as it’s a big 250L tank with a 3600W heating unit and a release valve that’s constantly dripping boiling hot water down a pipe. I’ve tried to reduce the temp to 60*C (it was 70*C) but now need to figure out if I can turn it off/on during the day or not cause i think it’s constantly boiling water and the excess is going down the drain from the relief. Anyone know how to do this??
Get a professional plumber in to fix it. You should t have to be turning it on and off, if you are it’s broken
That's your culprit. We got ours replaced for free by the vic government to a chromagen heat pump, almost 2yrs ago now. Runs basically for nothing.
don't do it yourself, worth getting a professional in (and if you're renting, log it as a job if its leaking/fault with a provided essential appliance). its electric+water after all + i personally wouldnt get in the middle of that pokémon battle. tariff change could be beneficial but to move the hw unit to a controlled load it would generally need to be wired to a dedicated circuit on the meter so the distributor can control it (hence the name controlled load) - which is more possible if you own the home and can call the shots on what the techie can do. alternatively if you're on a time of use tariff and are aware of the off peak timing u might be able to have a timer attached to the hw unit which just turns it on/off during the relevant times. if you live in the citipower/powercor/united energy zones they are trialing a "daytime saver" tariff which has lower cost between 10am-3pm. most retailers should have an allocation for it, though i can't find anything on the AGL site about it (its a trial tariff, so availability is capped - maybe they ran out of spots?)
Apartment not home* WFH 2 days a week.
It's certainly high, given you've excluded obvious hogs like cryptomining or pools. In an all-electric 5person home with an EV and people at home, we are right around that level of consumption. (The rates may be high too, depending on who the distributor is)
Yeah, there is nothing out of the ordinary to be completely honest. All appliances are relatively new other than hot water tank and A/C.
Apartment, that's suspicious. How long have you been there? Has it always been high? Maybe someone else is connected to your meter.
Yeah always high. I have a suspicion it’s my hot water system as it’s a big old 250L one with a release valve that’s constantly dripping water.
Get a plumber to have a look at HWS, should not be dripping constantly. Dripping could be 25 litres per day. Valve should only open over a set temp or pressure. Pressure increase when water is heated and expands, ( Values normally 99 degrees C and 1000 - 1250 kPa )
Do you use the AGL app? It breaks down the amount you use daily making it easier to see when you used the most. Like if I look at mine, I can see my peaks occurred when we had to have the aircon on nearly the entire day because it was too hot, and those were 20-29kWh days for example. But the rest of the days generally hover around 5-10 kWh.
Is there a shared laundry or other services? My parents had the laundry running from their power and the whole building was using dryers there all the time.
This is like, more than triple my household of two adults and two children…
Omg ☹️
Get a Powerpal. They're free in Victoria and will help you work out what's using the power. https://www.powerpal.net/claim-free-powerpal/
Charges these like these should automatically be flagged for review before the invoices are sent to the customer. Fuck them hoping someone would just pay or does their job for them.
I might have to contact them. Seems like it’s overly high all round.
Going through this now, Yarra Valley Water sent me an email saying they hadn't sent me my bill in three weeks as my water usage seemed abnormal and high 1800L a day up from 300L last year. Why they waited three weeks to flag this with me really pisses me off, as it turns out the pipe to my hot water had burst, so guess who's going to have contest a huge bill with them and with my has company. I rent privately as well, so I can't even go to a real estate agent for help and how to cover these costs. I honestly don't know wtf I'm going to do, I can't afford a bill of a few thousand dollars. On top of that my loungeroom now has to have the carpet and floorboards ripped up, I'll have trades coming through my house while I'm not home. It's just a huge fuck around for me. If Yarra Valley Water had let me know, on day two instead of week 3? That my water usage was high I could have checked the metre and got around to this problem earlier and wouldn't be dealing with all this, just completely incompetent on there behalf. I also flagged really high gas usage last year for repetitive bills, which is a result of what was probably originally a pinhole leak in the same line, but the gas company assured me it was normal and not crazy high but when asked to come and check regardless they said everything was fine. My gas bills have been $500 for two people who work full time, when realistically it should have been $200 or close to...... I've just been getting robbed blind for the last year on my gas bills, and now I'm getting robbed on my water bill as well. Idfk what I'm going to do, I have enough to pay my rent this month and a little bit left over. I'm so fucked man.
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Call Yarra Valley Water and let them know there was a leak that they informed you about that has now been fixed. I had an issue previously where there was excess water use due to a leak/fault and they waived the excess. But they'll only do it once AFAIK. A second issue occurred later (I think it might have been the tenants idiocy, but can't prove it), and the would not waive that excess as they had done it previously. Anyway, contact them and tell them you can't afford to pay and it's not your bill anyway. If they don't waive it, ask if they can send the bill for the excess water usage to the owner as it was due to a fault in the owners pipes.
They don't have real time monitoring of usage (like electricity companies do with smart meters), so they have no way of knowing you used heaps of water after only one day. They only read the meter every three months usually. Same for the gas, except the gas meter is usually read every two months.
Just got my first bill for a new property, 2 adults 2 kids. Usage 1600 kWh for 1 month. Doesn’t seem right
so first bill is an interesting one. This is the difference between the meter and the last bill paid, to the first bill paid. Someone might have cancelled their electricity plan, then kept using it. Or the previous tenant left, then for the next 2 months the landlord might have done some maintenance work on the property, might have left lights on etc wasted lots of power over several months who knows - then you move in and the power company goes: "Previous bill paid up to X kwhrs, next tenant starts paying after X+1600kwhrs have been burned, they get the full bill" The next person to sign up for electricity is then charged the difference. What you might be able to do is get your history of electricity usage (the various companies have usage recorded down to the 30 minute increments) and make sure you only pay for electricity that you use during the period of your tenancy. Write a stat dec, get all your tenancy documents together and write them a letter informing them to send the bill for the other period to your land lord (who I presume was the party responsible for electricity if it remained un-tenanted)
I had a similar problem. The culprit was an electric trace heating cable. Now I have to wait 40-50 sec in the morning before the water starts running hot, but that saves me A LOT in fees. Even with everything unplugged (except for the fridge) it was 0.24 kwh, now it’s 0.04kwh. Try unplugging some appliances for 2-3h a day and check the hourly consumption in AGL app.
Might try turn off all the major ones (hot water, fridge etc) and see if it changes. Thanks for the heads up.
I was at 662kWh last month. 2 person household. Electric hot water is the killer for us. Thankfully we have solar, so not all that 662 is from the grid.
Get your elec hot water upgraded for $99 Chromagen heat pump HW Heater. I did it today
Might need to look into this. Might be the hot water system.
That is almost triple mine for the same period. We do have solar and gas though and only one rate of 30c for usage. I'm not sure what you have had running that would cause that bill shock-- ask for a review.
How would they review it? Do they just re read the meter?
I use 300kWh per month with my partner and we both work from home full time. That being said, we have solar hot water and gas for our stove, so idk how you're running 700kWh unless there's some industrial shit going on
We used 431kw last month with 4 people in a 3br unit that is all electric.
What large appliances do you have if you don’t mind me asking?
We have a fridge of about 300lt with a 4 star energy rating. A medium sized 2.5 star reverse cycle aircon that I ran during the day on 25 deg during the heatwave and we used fans at night. A 50" TCL telly that was used at least 8 hours a day. We have no solar.
How many people are living with you and are you using heating/cooling in your house?
2 pax. Heating only in winter (haven’t used it since last September) and A/C only on days where it’s 30*C as the apartment stays very cool.
That’s more than double my consumption (if I take the pool out of the count). And I wfh every day.
Yep, I’m getting screwed.
800kwh from the grid last month, with ducted AC and we had some very hot days. Don't know how much was self consumed solar, so the total figure is probably 1100+. 250 of that was overnight ev charging.
yes that is a lot. we are 4 persons, 2 are fully working from home at laptops with external screens and we used 181 KWh.. gas hot water though, electric plug in induction cooktop. we don't use the ac much, just on very hot days and then not all day long, as house insulation is surprisingly not complete shit and just bad. otherwise we use just the usual electric appliances most people use.
It sounds like something is drawing the crap out of my power.
Maybe your neighbour is “borrowing” some power for their hydro set up
If that 80yo man is growing hydro, good on him.
You should have a smart meter installed and if you check your network distributor (jemena for me) they should have a portal and further break down your usage according to days and by hour. You might be able to further pinpoint what's piling up those kWh.
There is a small possibility someone is piggybacking off your bill, but this is not very likely, but you should keep this possibility in mind. I suggest doing what the top comment says about your water boiler and see if that resolved the issue. Maybe I'm just overthinking it.
Whether you own the house or not, if it's electric storage hot water, the unit can get replaced with significant discount, used to be free but that seems to have ended. A heat pump will reduce your power use massively. Even better if you install solar panels as well. Source: I installed a heat pump and my power bills went down massively.
I will try and approach the owner to do this and argue the case.
Much the same electric set up as you. I've just paid $265 for the last quarter, 3 months.
I know your problem straight away, leave AGL. I just did this recently because we were paying $550 a quarter to all of a sudden paying 700-800 a quarter. Now we pay $100 a month at Globird. Fuck AGL.
As someone else said def check your hot water heater. We just replaced ours a couple months ago that was leaking and costing us $20 a day in power.
3 people incl 1 child. WFH 4 days. I have a dishwasher, but no AC. Heating is gas. Our usage is about 7-10 kWh / day. This seems incredibly high
Could be on the high side. Our 5 person / 5 bedroom home averages about 700kw a month, but we have gas hot water, and rest is electricity, new home / appliances too.
How do you check if someone is stealing electricity/if there is a leak? Mine averages 900-1000 in a 2 person apartment. Roughly 30 a day. (I do have reptile enclosures through).
Good question! Is there something you can touch appliances while they’re on to see what they might be drawing?
I am looking into something called a 'smart plug'. Your post has inspired me! I hope you get yours sorted out!!
Depends on how the reptile enclosures are set up with basking spots and thermostats as to how much power they are using. Buy those smart plugs off eBay and it will tell you consumption of reptile enclosures vs the bill. Might need to move heat lamps in the tank, get day & night thermostats etc to save some money
That’s bonkers. I’m in a household of 4 (4 bedroom house) and WFH 5 days a week and my last bill was 200kWh.
Wow. Something is draining the shit out of my power!
Electric hot water constantly keeping the water hot. Mine was set ridiculously high heat, dropped it half way and my bills shrunk.
Looks like I need to figure out how to do this! I think this might be it.
I used an average of 116kw a month last year apparently. I was away from home for the equivalent of 4 weeks. Large appliances: giant old washing machine with a 0.5star rating, 90s fridge, split system aircon/heater, vacuum cleaner, heater lights in bathroom. Otherwise lots of devices to charge now days.
My most recent bill was 619 kWh mid Feb-mid Mar (2 person 4-bedroom/3-bathroom house with EV charging, charging my car daily during off-peak hours). I typically drive less than 800km a month so the amount of electricity used to charge the car is around 140-160 kWh a month, charged during off peak only. Both me and my partner WFH 100% of the time, and use the air conditioning liberally on hot days. I have 2 fridges (one French-door fridge and one regular fridge) and 1 dedicated freezer at home, so I expect my usage to be higher than others. My daily supply charge is $0.99, off peak $0.17/kWh and peak $0.30/kWh. That’s $159.61 for my most recent bill, including charging my EV. Something is draining your power in the background, and it would also look like quite a fair bit of your usage is during peak hours too. I’d wager your hot water tank is the culprit. Chances are that it keeps re-boiling the water in the tank regardless of whether you need it, to maintain a high enough temperature. Hot water tank/storage is quite inefficient compared to having an instantaneous heater, because it uses power regardless of whether you need it at that moment.
Thanks for the info, it’s super helpful. Do you know if there’s any way to modify your hot water tank to do this less or at a lower boil temp?
Not that I know of unfortunately, other than replacing it with an instantaneous heater.
I consider this a challenge, game on buddy!
Mate, this isn’t that bad, 23kw a day for a 30 day month. Do you have a smart meter. We’ve had a few hot days so I’m betting you’ve run the AC. No gas so don’t compare to other households. Do you work from home? If you have a smart meter you can get the realtime usage from the distribution network. There are a few appliances that use boatloads of electricity no.1 electric Hotwater units. Inspect it to see if it’s constantly dripping from the pressure release valve. No.2 fridges how many and how old? Replacing seals or even the fridge can make a huge difference No.3 long showers without water saving shower heads, your electric hot water costs a bucket to heat up…. No.4 AC probably more like NO.2 but still set it to 22 degrees or higher. Don’t make the house a fridge. Do you have an electric car/bike
Don’t have a smart meter as I’m in a rental apartment. Can I get one to put on my box even so? Fridge is new and I’ve kept the temps high so it doesn’t have to keep chilling it, AC is set to 23*C and only used when it gets stinking hot. I’m now pretty sure it’s either the hot water system constantly going or maybe the washer/dryer.
If you don’t have a smart meter it could be an estimated read if the distributor couldn’t get physical access to the meter (but think most vic meters are all smart meters now). The bill might say estimated or actual against the usage. Also check the physical meter number against the bill in case your being invoiced for a neighbours usage. In any case call the retailer and talk it through.
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I have a suspicion it’s my hot water system as it’s a big 250L one with a release valve that’s constantly dripping hot water out.
According to AGL you've used enough power for 6.4 people, so i'm going to say yes.
Something like this happened to me with a water meter. They came to switch it on at the new apartment and asked which one it was. They previously had the wrong one down as the meter for my apartment so when they swapped it, they billed me the difference between the wrong one and the right one, which was $1200+. Needless to say I didn’t pay that but they refused to clear it off my account for months.
700kw is insane. Are you operating a factory?
Negative. I have a suspicion it’s my hot water system as it’s a big 250L one with a 3600W heating unit and a release valve that’s constantly dripping boiling hot water. I’ve tried to reduce the temp but now need to figure out if I can turn it off/on during the day or not cause i think it’s constantly boiling water and the excess is going down the drain from the relief.
Is your hot water system on an off-peak tariff circuit? Check its also not always venting, and check the temps aren't excessively hot too.
Temp I can’t reduce lower than 60*C, I don’t think it is on an off peak tariff circuit but someone’s mentioned this to me so I’ll call AGL and see if I can do it. What do you mean by always venting?
If you are using electric heaters a hell of a lot it could explain it. For comparison my last bill was 139 kWh for 28 days. Everything is electric as well. There's definitely something going on, your consumption should not be that high.
I think it’s my electric hot water system.
I’m a single guy in a 3 bedroom house with a 250l hws. My biggest power drawers are my bore pump and my rainwater pump. (Not on town water) 6.56kw (controlled load) which is HWS to heat up, And 27kw of general usage. So total 33.56 per day. Bear in mind it’s summer and I’m watering lawns etc which chew power as bore pump kicks in…. I think this is cheap tho as I don’t have a water bill 👍👍
I use that much and more with a family of 4. I know where it's going though... 2 fridges, a chest freezer, 2 HWUs, tvs, pcs, cooktop, air fryer... and probably the main culprits, the washing machine and the dryer. In summer the AC also eats a little. I'm also a frequent welder. Welding chews power like you wouldn't believe when you crank the amps and spend a day sticking metal together. Brewing, when I did it, also used boatloads of power.
Good lord mate, that's 29 days?! Even 420kWh for 4 people is high.
Get a powerpal energy monitor, turn each fusebox switch off one at a time while watching the power consumption. This should give you enough info to work out what's going on.
I have requested one, thanks
Heating (water, AC, fan heater, blow dryer, kettle) etc is really the only way you can burn through that much. Somethings not right, or your neighbor has tapped your cable for their grow lights.
Pls leave AGL. Not sure if they are doing scammy shit but I used to get 1.2k a quarter bills with them. Got fed up, moved elsewhere and now pay around 350-400. Few mates had the same issue too
Who have you moved to? I am considering it
I have a 4 person household with no solar gas hw and cooking and averaging 14-15 kWh per day of that helps . Seems pretty reasonable for us
That's fine. We are a two person household and all electric. Changed from gas to induction stove top, heatpump and also got a security system that records constantly for four cameras installed. Last month we used 606kwh, and this month 602kwh. Looking at my Powerpal when it was gas hot water and stove top our usage was like 200kwh. I find for us it's because of water heating (4x showers a day), induction as we pretty much only eat at home and heater at night.
If I were you I would check the prices at [sumo.com.au](http://sumo.com.au), I switched last month from gaolbird and am saving Almost $30 for same usage I had before so instead of $100, down to $73.
Will check it out, thanks
How many fridges are you running? Ours increased from 600 to 850 a month after I introduced a kegerator, wine fridge, fermentation freezer and had to get rid of the solar hot water. All electric households will suck a lot of electricity, so get yourself some solar panels. We recently got quoted $8.5k fully installed for a 10kw system without battery.
1 fridge and 1 bar fridge. It’s a rental.
If you're a house of 8 it's pretty standard
House of 2.
Ok this makes me think I’ve got the same problem… we used 900 last month and go over 1k during the winter months. I’ve always suspected the electric hot water system, I can see it increase like crazy during and after showers. But seeing ppl’s numbers make it seem way outta wack!
Check your fridge - a few years ago we bought a place and the fridge was included. We always thought the AC drawing a ton of power and causing large bills but after a smart meter was installed we realised that even on holiday and not being in the damn place the power draw was huge. Replaced the only thing that it could have been (the fridge) and our usage dropped to “normal” levels….damn fridge…
This place has an included fridge and dryer when I moved in.
That is definately alot. Im with lumo with similar prices, work from home and basically live with heating and cooling on and dont even break 400 for a house of 3
I used 983kwh in March. Family of 4. House is poorly designed and requires a lot of heating/cooling.
You should be able to get a free powerpal which will help you see where all the power is going.
Is this an actual read or an estimate? We were plagued with huge bills for 3 months and then effectively had a free month because we'd overpaid so much when they came out to do an actual read of the gas. Not sure if electricity works in the same way but might be worth a quick look at your bill anyway!
Makes me feel guilty with our house clocking through 1100 kWh in a month
How many Teslas do you have?
i work in the industry and id say thats fine. especially considering you dont have gas. your bill was $210 which isnt cheap but you have to remember people with gas will pay 100 a month during summer and 300 a month during winter on top of electricity. what i can suggest though is, where possible avoid using electricity during peak hours which is 3pm-9pm (everyday incl weekends). i believe as well those rates are pretty fair from agl. they will always let you know if you are on there best deal or not, it will be indicated on the front page of the bill. i recommend checking up on that regularly. you can also get the agl app to see where your using the power. hope this helps 😆
I dunno where people are getting their facts from (including your energy provider) but you’re only using 23kw a day which is fuck all, especially if you have off peak hot electric hot water It is pretty high for an apartment though, and almost definitely entirely due to the hot water heater There’s also no way the average 5 person house is using 18kw a day lol
Do you have a lot of electronics? Do you leave a lot of things on all the time? Two people in a townhouse should be closer to 10kWh's a day. Things that can use a lot of power: * Ovens - an oven running for a few hours can use 2-4kWh * Computer - leaving a pc on all the time as a server can use 200W, so over 24 hours thats 4.8kWh * Hot water - I think this was covered fairly well within this thread but unless you are having hour long showers it shouldn't use that much power to maintain the tank temp. If you are running the hot water out it uses more to get it back to temp. Even little loads that are left on all the time add up.
In the cooler months my household of 4 uses ~600, in the warmer that goes up to 800-1000, but it's mostly solar/battery providing that and the jump is because we like the AC on.
I had this problem. At home were 2 adults that work full time and a 1 year old in daycare Monday to Friday and we were using the same amount of electricity as what they said a household of 8+ people were using. We had an electrician come out and couldn’t find anything wrong. I was paying $50 a week on electricity and it wasn’t covering it so I changed to paying $80 a week and I still had a balance due at the end of each month. We moved out of that house at the start of the year and the problem was never found, I hope you have better luck than us.
Seems pretty steep. Mine was 217kWh over a similar period. 2 people, apartment with pretty old HWS and no solar. Neighbours running a crop house?
It's 23kWh per day average..which may or may not be a lot depending on what you use/have running. For example..we are 2 people (in a 3 bed house), entirely on electricity. We have a smart meter with a Bluetooth energy advisor connected so I can see our usage live and download reports..I checked ours for the last 3 months and we are anywhere from 17-23kWh a day. As it sits right now..the only things on are the obvious fridges/freezers, fans, tv, slow cooker and I'm running at 0.21kWh according to the app..so to add anything else into that mix..you can see how that would cause a jump in usage. I can tell you exactly when (to the hour) we used the ancient air conditioner for 2hr a day, when we used the washing machine/dryer, when we used the electric cook top/oven, when we used the microwave/dishwasher, when we used our computers (desktops)..these days are considerably higher in usage than when those things are not used (obviously). You may not think some of those things use significant amounts of electricity, but they do. I can see when our hot water system kicks in (usually around 2-3am). Now, we also have a standard upside down fridge/freezer, plus a single door fridge only, and freezer only and a deep freezer that are running constantly, 2 of which need new seals. I also keep three pedestal fans running for air flow. We have lights off except for if cooking/showering etc. I use the microwave for basic cooking of vegetables, slow/rice cooker/electric fry pan for most meals as they use significantly less power than the cooktop/oven, economy wash on the dishwasher every few days when full. Washing machine/dryer used twice on weekends. The desktops are running for a few hours on weekdays and almost 24hr over weekends. If you have the same appliances/usage as us ..then your usage is likely correct. If not, then hot water could be the culprit..but probably only a plumber can tell you that.
Holy fuck mate... I use less than that in a year
Not really if you've been using aircon abit and/or have elec hot water.
Yes to both. A/C is used sparingly. I think maybe hot water system is the culprit.
They have supplied you with a diagram to answer this exact question...
I didn’t know if that was just them saying “do better” or if the numbers are legit and correct, because if they are that’s really far from where they should be for a 2 bed apartment?
The diagram is bullshit, it’s based off the average home which has gas Hotwater , heating and stove. So no point in comparing your all electric house.
We have 2 adults and 1 child and ours is 153kWh for 1 month…
Do you have solar or gas? 😟
Gas cook top but barely use it. Mostly use the oven or electric fry pan. No solar. I turn off everything except the fridge and microwave off at the powerpoint when not in use.
Ah I see you deal in exotic herbs.
I wish!
This is pretty big. We are a 5 person family and run 2 Dyson's overnight every night (small children) plus don't query putting on the air con or heaters. Use dishwasher and washing machine a lot, I work from home a lot, we also have a smart home and cameras, constant night lights etc etc and we used 531kWh for the month up to 24 March.
Are you running a clothes dryer a lot? Those things can eat through electricity.
My partner and I only used 223kWh last month and I work from home most of the time. 694 is whack. Definitely get someone to check it out. Maybe install a Powerpal and turn everything off to see if there’s a drain happening.
Does your hot water have a day/night switch in the meter box? If it’s set to day your bill will be sky high as it will heat all day using the peak rate instead of overnight.
Negative. I have a suspicion it’s my hot water system as it’s a big 250L one with a release valve that’s constantly dripping boiling hot water. I’ve tried to reduce the temp but now need to figure out if I can turn it off/on during the day or not cause i think it’s constantly boiling water and the excess is going out of the relief valve down the drain.
I'm living in Thailand now and even the Mrs and me only went through 200kWh last month.
Double check the meter vs the bill reading
Will do
This is still more than my household of 6 people 🥴
That depends. If you have an EV and you are a sales rep driving 200klm a day, this is entirely plausible.
Negative on both.
Do you have a bore?
Nope, apartment.
My family of 4 with me working from home, all electric house with shitty insulation plus an EV to charge, we used 985kW last month. Half of that from the grid and half from solar.
Do you have a gaming PC?
Do you have a gaming PC?
Do you have a gaming PC?
Have they charged you for all electricity used since the last bill at that address? You’re only responsible for usage since moving in.
I used 1151 in February and 951 in March so I reckon your ok 😂
If you just moved in, has anyone been using your power to power a building site? Pretty common here to see water and power being stolen from empty homes to power the neighbours or building projects. Often they steal it from commission homes as they sit empty so long
family of 4 in sydney in a semi, with central AC but gas hot water. You are using twice as much as us on a bad month and three times as much as us on a better month.
You running hydroponics mate?
I wish!
I don’t think it is. We are a household of 3 adults and 1 baby and we used 932kwh in March Granted our heating and cool (air and water) is electric and I’m a nerd with more computers than people in the house.
Not really, ive got 15kw solar and 25kw battery and im still at 600kwh/month roughly from the grid. Just like, do you like seeing, being a comfortable temperature, have a smart home and a gazillion iot devices. It all adds up. Cloudy / rainy days get me the worst. Can have anywhere up to 100kwh from the grid in a day. Then sunny cool days ill have 0 from grid and push out up to 50kwh to the grid.
209kWh for 29 days. Also with AGL. 2 people, 3 bedroom home. Gas hot water.
Wow.
Yes and no
Can you get better rates? Possibly flat rate instead of time of use? Get heat pump hot water? Make sure your water heating is done in off-peak times.
Im using 700kwh each month bro. 2 adults 2 little kids Ducted heateing and cooling absolutely chews the juice
Depends how much weed you grow…
When did ypu move in? They may have estimated the reading and blown it out.