Electricity

requiem1

I didn't know where else to post this and considering techy people are generally the best people to ask i thought i'd put it here. My household electricity bill last year was on average 130 euro for two months and now the last 2 bills i've gotten have been 502 and 494 euro respectively. My parents are starting to get concerned and they think the fact that my dad has been home alot more cause he's retired is causing it. They think it might be his computer but it's a three year old dell and most of the time its on standby. They also think it might be to do with my computer which is as follows,
AMD 3000+ S754
1Gig ram
gainward 6600gt
320gig seagate barracudas
460W powersupply akasa
Its also water cooled if that makes a diiference at all. I do game alot but i don't know how much this can really affect you're electricity bill. reasonably i spend most of my time in college and its off for the majority of the day so any gaming or work done on it is at night. Its a five bedroom house and there's only 3 of us living here and the only significant addition to the house hold electricity wise is one of those massive double door american fridges by samsung. Really any help on this would be really appreciated.:)

steve-hosting36

What is the wattage on the fridge? Some of the big ones can eat a lot of power. Your computer only eats about as much as three light bulbs when running at full tilt, so it's unlikely it would cause such as spike. A typical machine, left running 24/7 will run up about 15-20 euro of power usage in a month.

Karoma

"...they think the fact that my dad has been home alot more cause he's retired is causing it.

Tell him to stop taking such 'long showers' and go easy on the karaoke machine.


Increased ESB prices + winter = higher bills anyway.

crosstownk

Sounds weird - has the cost only gone up since you got your computer? However, I doubt your PC would use this much juice.

Anything could be causing it. Best thing to do is read your ESB meter every day and calculate the cost. www.esb.ie will give you the charges. Do you use electric heaters, immersion, oven a lot more than previously? Be sure the readings are actual rather than estimated. Get out the last bill and verify your meter reading. If your still in doubt talk to the ESB about it.
Outside sensor lights can consume quite a bit. Electric showers are heavy consumers too. Kettles, toasters, and basically anything that heats.

Best of luck - but you need to sort it out - €500 per two months is madness!!

andy1249

Electricity consumption is by the unit and that unit is the Kilowatt hour , your PC's power supply is 460 Watt , assuming its fully loaded 100% of the time ( which is highly unlikely ) then thats still only 460W ( or .46 kilowatt ) per hour or one half a unit per hour , even leaving this on for 24 hours a day comes nowhere near 500 euros in two months.
It is impossible for the PC to be using that much electricity.

What is much more likely is that the heating , the shower , the toaster , hairdryer , kettle , all of which are much heavier on electricity than a PC , are being used more often with someone in the house all day.

Esel

Maybe your dad is using a 3-bar electric fire while he is home alone?

byte

If you still have the Energy Label for your fridge, it will say near the bottom the energy usage per year.

I'd very much doubt that it's the sole reason for such a hike. If it is, there is something severely wrong with it.

Likewise, your PC wouldn't put your bill up that much, unless you simulataneously turn on a 2kW oil rad or something

requiem1

I know this is highly unlikely but could someone be running there electricity off my meter? Is that even possible its just this electrician offered my sister it in her apartment. The fridge is apparently low electricity and high efficiency according to our electrician so thats not the issue, does anyone know if it could be something to do with our boiler, someone told me they burn loads of electricity. Tha main problem i think we're having is that nothing really has changed over the past four months and we're trying to account for an increase of 370 euro and the thing thats pissing me off is i'm getting the blame so any suggestions are greatly apreciated and thanks those who have posted:)

cooperguy

Again make sure your readings arn't estimates cause they can be WAY off. I know a guy involved in a GAA club who had the gas estimated before. The bill was for €50 even though it had'nt been used even once. He rang up and got a meter reading and he got a 'revised bill' of €0 !!!

Here's something you can try, but it assumes you can gain access to the meter.

Cut off all the switches in the consumer unit one by one. At that rate of usage the meter's wheel should be spinning at an insane speed so see if it slows down or stops altogether after tripping a certain switch. If so then you know which room is hogging all the power so you could investigate the devices in there (assuming your electrician labelled them correctly).

dogbert_the_dog

cos I've nothing better to do took a few minutes to do some quick calculations -

for your fridge, checking rating for a samsung american fridge gave power rating of 538kWh/year -> 90kWh for 2 months-> so at 12.73c/unit (kWh) costs €11.45/month

for your pc 460W psu -> .46 KWh for every hour you have it on, say 6hrs/day so 2.76 kWh/day -> 166 kWh for 2 months -> price €21.13
The monitor uses power too mine is rated 240V/1a which is 240W so .24 KWh for every hour it's on so again assuming 6hrs/day price for 2 months (didn't do this the long way just the pc final *24/46)

fade2black

Think about all the things you use that has an element...kettle, fridge, iron...etc...all big electricity wasters.

dogbert_the_dog

to finish the msg i started, apologies hit a wrong key......


...monitor cost €11.02,
so your pc total cost €32.15

for the older pc, it will be lower power rated but just to make the point assuming it runs for 12hrs/day at full power a v. generous estimate is to double that for your own pc so total €64.30

so for fridge & 2pc an absolute maximum cost of €107.90

for the boiler, don't know a whole lot but any specs i found showed them rated 240v and required a 5A fuse. the boiler will draw nothing near this current but again to make a point assume it does and is left on for 12hrs/day that's 1.2KW *12h so for two months (60 days) cost arrived at is €110.16 (the boiler will actually only use a fraction of this)

Point I'm trying to make is if old bill was €130 and new one is €500, the differnce of €370 cannot possibly be accounted for by all the above which total under €250 (the just under €220 above plus vat at 13.5%). Standing charges on the electricity bill are irrelevant as they were ther for the cheaper bill too.

I'd have thought it's very unlikely someone's leeching electricity through your meter if you're in a house, but it could be happening, and if it's your parents' house I'd imagine they know the difference between an estimated and actual reading from the bill. btw the figure for the fridge i presume assumes normal operating conditions so unless the door is being left open all the time on it or it has some other fault causing the motor tyo run constantly it should be reasonably acurate.

All this does little or nothing to solve your problem, but at least you can make a good argument that your pc isn't causing the jump in electricity bill.

I've read over those calculations a couple of times, they seem ok to me but if anyone does spot a flaw in them i apologise in advance

Dummy

This is a bit of a hobby horse of mine. I have been watching our own and my dad's electricity bills over the past few months.

The big thing that I have noticed is that they are always estimates. For example, our last bill came in at €350, but when I took the meter reading and called it through and requested a new bill, this dropped to €180. Dad's original bill came in at €375 and it dropped to €96.

Check to see if your bills are estimates. If yes, then call your meter reading in.

Don't forget, that like the phones, there is more competition in the market place. I moved our electricity supplier to a company based in Offaly. I have received a bill yet but will be watching for it. They claim to be cheaper then ESB and Airtricity.

Sparky

Has anyone been using the grill more often? Do you have a halogen cooker hob?
Is your meter a normal one or a night saver (ie: 2 digit readouts)?
If not id recommend you get one.
Juice after 11pm at night is 3c compared to 12c per unit.

Any storage heaters or combi heaters?
Undersink water heaters?
Bathroom underfloor heating?

hobie

Maplins (and others) do something called an 'Energy Monitor' ..... you plug it into your wall socket and then plug your device(or multi strip socket) into the Energy monitor ..... there are various options to measure KWH ... Voltage ... Amps etc etc .....

all you need to do to measure your PC power consumption is set it to KWH .... it will give you the running total for number of units consummed for ever more ... ...... multiply them by your price per unit(from your leccie Bill and you will know exactly how much your PC costs to run)

note. these units are rated up to 13amps i.e. the max power available from any 3 pin socket in your house ... they cannot be used with wired in devices like Electric showers/cookers/immersion heaters ....

http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?TabID=1&criteria=power%20meters&ModuleNo=38343&doy=10m4

Sparky

Infact the ESB are due to bring out a smart meter in a few years.
We got a demo meter to test about 3 years ago, it has all options for energy use how much your bill is at any given time. And best of all from the ESB's point of view, auto disconnects if your bill isnt paid in time.
Although the meter was to be used via the phone line, they found this as an issue, as your phone could be easily disconnected to fool the meter, but software would realise and disconnect power.
But the ESB plan in the future on providing a data service (ie broadband) via the power lines and thus info to and from the meter.
Sorry for the off topicness but id thought id let you know
Now wheater or not this thing will be in houses within the next 5-10 years is another story.

With the way the ESB is going they reckon in a few years, sparks like myself will be getting special liciences to install meters rather than getting the ESB man. We will have our own seal tag with our RECI number etc.

Wertz

Someone stealing your juice was the first thing that sprung to my mind when I read the OP...it depends where you live, what type of house, detactched/terraced/apartment, new neighbours recently etc...I'm not trying to be alarmist but a jump of 250% in a bill in such a short time is very suspect. If you count out estimate billsas the cause then look further into this...as mentioned it's NOT any computer doing that, or a fridge unless you're running a butcher's cold room.

riptide

Tell Mammy/sisters to stop using the hidden sunbed all day. Seriously... that is an enourmous amount of electricity.... List all the plug in items in your house... I'll take it from there..... And i mean everthing.. electical all heaters of all sorts....

PS Your PC would want to be bordering on Mainframe to jump to that bill...

Cassiel

Couple of people here halve hit the nail on the head. Take a look at the bill, if there is an 'e' beside the number of units, like 1234567 e. Then the bill is an estimate and is why its waaay off.The only other scenario is that someone is nicking your juice man.

SeanW

either that or someone's doing someting stupid like leaving the immersion on 24/7 or something.