Thursday, March 22, 2012

Electricity tariffs increase in January has now been adjusted in the Energy Cost Calculator

In January the price for electricity from my retailer increased as it did for a lot of people. The biggest increase which people often don’t notice, was the Service to Property Charge which increased by a staggering 25%. For me that’s another $62 added to the bill which I can’t control. I can control my usage, but when the increase is added to the Service to Property Charge that has nothing to do with usage.

I’ve now updated the Energy Cost Calculator with the latest peak energy rate which is 22 cents per kilowatt hour. The Energy Cost Calculator allows you to determine how much your devices are using over a year and the cost. It really is amazing how just a few cents a day saved on a single device can add up to quite a bit over the year.

When comparing electricity prices don’t forget to compare the Service to Property Charge as well. The best approach is to take a couple of bills and do the calculation for each bill with each of the electricity retailers you are thinking of using. I’ve seen some retailers with quite high Service to Property charges, whilst their usage rate compares well or better than others, it was when the full calculation was done they were shown to be worse than a higher usage rate.

With basic changes to our families electricity usage we’ve move than halved our electricity bill and now use around 6.5kWh per day. By using a low cost power meter and the Energy Cost Calculator, I was able to determine which devices were using how much energy, the cost per year, and with some basic changes, we now make considerable ongoing savings.

You can check out the Energy Cost Calculator at http://www.justlocal.com.au/clients/energy-cost/.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

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