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Thread ID: 132836	2013-05-23 00:46:00	Electricity Prices	Poppa John (284)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1342738	2013-05-24 21:32:00	Originally Posted by gary67 The best way to save money on your electric bill is to turn everything off at the wall except your fridge and freezer, count how many items are on standby every night when you go to bed, that's where your money is going Actually you will be shocked to learn that the biggest power usage is not items on stand by. Do you have an Electric Cooker? Well straight away several Kws of Electricity gone there, then theres the Hot Water Cylinder. Little gizmo called an OWL energy monitor. Really gives some insight into where your powers going. We use one to battle the Lines Company every winter that plus Gas Cooking and Waterback recycling the heat from the fire to the boiler makes a heck of a differance to our bill that halves over winter. Of course Electric Heating sucks a lot they dont call them 2kw heaters for nothing. As I write the owls reading 0.93kwh! What is on? Well this desktop, TV with video and DVD on standby, Laptop via mains, A fridege/freezer chuntering away, 4 energy saving 20kw bulbs. So really its how you monitor you use. Our goal is to keep our load this winter below 0.6kw on our lines bill and we can do that. off course that should translate into about 10 units per day. Our overnight reading struggles to hit 1kw for the night. Nope. Garry67 is right, as long as everything is turned off at the wall, including the meter, you are really minimising your usage. It is a little inconvenient for the clock and the TV, but all that stuff is not really essential anyway. ;) PS: With everything off, it is harder to be shocked.	R2x1 (4628)
1342739	2013-05-24 23:31:00	Bugger the cost, just pay the price & be warm & comfortable. PJ , < < < < < < Did I really say that????? PJ	Poppa John (284)
1342740	2013-05-24 23:44:00	Talking about electricity what is cheaper filling your kettle with hot water and boiling it or filling your kettle with cold water then boiling it ?. For us to get hot water out of the hot water tap takes about a minute. The same when cooking you dinner/tea filling your pots with cold water or hot water what uses more electricity ?. :)	Trev (427)
1342741	2013-05-25 00:35:00	Don't drink water which has been heated in a hot water tank - dissolved heavy metals. (can't remember the correct term for this)	zqwerty (97)
1342742	2013-05-25 02:58:00	Boiling a jug of cold water is more efficient. The mistake most people make is they fill the jug near the top when they only need 1/4 full for a cuppa. That wastes energy.	Winston001 (3612)
1342743	2013-05-25 03:06:00	Powerswitch etc is very useful but limited in its effectiveness. The problem is that each power retailer has a mish-mash of plans with slightly different rates - and none of these plans have a standard name and terms across the industry. I had a look at Trustpower once and they seemed to have at least 15 variations none of which equated to Contact so a direct comparison was impossible. And then as said above, there are the lines companies. You don't have a choice about who owns the power wires and how much they charge. Use no electricity at all and you'll still pay $50-70/month. :help: Apparently in Britain the law requires power retailers to publish standard plans and kw prices so consumers can compare. We need that here.	Winston001 (3612)
1342744	2013-05-25 04:28:00	No way! That might let Lucas in and the dark ages would be upon us in a very large way. ;)	R2x1 (4628)
1342745	2013-05-25 04:38:00	Let me introduce to you THE LINES COMPANY www.thelinescompany.co.nz Seperate billing from you energy retailer in other words two bills! Available to all its customers across the King Country including Turangi. You think your electricity retailer charges are high! They have not anything on what your Lines bill is! Retailer price and units used you can control the Lines bill thats another story but is controllable if you understand how it works. Talk is this system being rolled out across the country one day! I would LOVE to see this happen. I used to work for a power company in the billing department years ago just as everything was being deregulated. Once, the power companies had to actually publish what the line charge was made up of. Since deregulation this has not been the case (AFAIK) and retailers have surreptitiously added larger and larger margins to the line charge - and basically manipulated this to suit themselves. I think everyone would be horrified to see how little of that huge daily charge ACTUALLY goes to Transpower...	johcar (6283)
1342746	2013-05-25 09:06:00	Talking about electricity what is cheaper filling your kettle with hot water and boiling it or filling your kettle with cold water then boiling it ?. For us to get hot water out of the hot water tap takes about a minute. The same when cooking you dinner/tea filling your pots with cold water or hot water what uses more electricity ?. :) Neither option. Filling it with cold water and placing it on top of the fire is the most efficient	gary67 (56)
1342747	2013-05-25 09:46:00	I am really curious as to what the cost of Photovoltaics + infrostructure would be, compared to the rip off prices we pay compared to other countries. I know the panel prices have really reduced a lot over the last few years. Anybody "REALLY" made the switch??	PPp (9511)
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