Electricity Usage

Manic

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Hey everyone,

So with the recent eskom price increases my electricty bill is around R9000 a month, which is crazy. I've worked it out and my tank contributes around R500 a month if my heaters run 24h a day. This is for a house with 5 people living in it with hardly anything on during the day, 2 geysers and only gas cooking appliances. Obviously there is something wrong, so just wanted to find out what everyone else is paying a month.

I also found something very cool which I am picking up today. It is a wireless electricty monitor. It connects to your meter box outside and you get a lcd screen inside your house that runs on batteries. It tells you exactly how much electricty you are using at any given time and can plug into your computer to give you a minute by minute usage report for the last two years. It is also cheap at R660. Have a look here:
OWL | Wireless Electricity Monitor Designed To Save You Money
 
Remember that the 25.4% increase was eskoms increase. And the municipality also hiked their rates. So its a double increase we got hit with.
 
R9k a month. Thats crazy. What you running? My electricity is about R1300, but I now run a solar geyser. Previously, about R1500.

2 geysers could be the issue. Investigate a heat pump for your geysers. Apparently much better pay back than solar and can be bolted on to existing geyser. Eskom is busy accrediting installers for rebates. So watch out for it.

You are in Jhb and I think city Power has a summer and winter rate that is double the summer rate.
 
Well 9k is definatly not correct. I have 10 systems running and my electricity is around 4k a month.
 
Thats bloody madness paying so much. My in-laws in Bertums pay R300, 3 people staying in a double storey house. They use a pre paid meter. Paying that amout they still thinking of going solar.
 
There is definately something wrong. I use like 6500 units of electricty at home and my dads engineering company which is only 2km's from my house uses 3000 units a month. At the factory lights are on 24 hours a day and some of the machines use 100Kw for most of the day. This R9000 has been going on for a while. It used to be R5000 and has increased with their increases.
 
Let us know how it works. Do you know if it is possible to attach the clip around an appliance cord to check what the appliance alone takes? For instance attach the clip around the power cord going to the tank lights?
 
Could be a couple of months back dating of electricity increase from 1 July to catch up.
 
I used 3352kwh last month - you need to start making a list of every item in the house and work out what your KWH should be. then find the culprit..
 
someones tapping into your juice supply for sure.. R9k is extreemly heavy.. a high bill should be R2500 a month from my experience and thats running a fully kitted tank normal household uitilities and a few bar fridges.. :)
 
Been speaking to a few electricians and they think it might be a earth leakage somewhere before the house, so it doesn't trip the power but is constantly supplying power to ground and wasting electricity.
 
surly thats the municipalities fault not yours?

It is probably the gardeners fault for stuffing up the cable. How is this for funny. My electricty just went off and is going to be off until 2 this afternoon. Just did a test and my whole house is working on my 4.5Kw generator. So cant be using more than that.
 
Yikes! R9k is bad! I just called the Cpt branch for radiant. Bunch of useless people working there! Nobody can tell me about using this device on a single cable instead of the main feed into the house.

Question is, if you use this device and there is a huge discrepancy in what you use and what you get billed on, can you use it as proof? Perhaps only to get them to come out and investigate the high usage.
 
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