Suggestions for reducing elec bill please.

[mattiloo]

$99 for month Aug 2022 - $186.96 Aug 23.
Family of 3.
One wfh.
Solar installed Sept 2020. Not solar hot water.
Pool.
Old appliances - can't replace atm. Just bought air fryer to reduce oven use.
Washing machine used 5 x week.
No tumble drier.
Appliances and pool run during day where possible. Medical autoclave run 5 x week at night.
LED lights.
1 TV.
No aircon.
Wood stove for heating.

For 22 - 23:
Total usage 5259.71 kWh
Solar Export 2555.06kWh
Daily usage 14.41kWh/day.

AGL
General usage $0.2348
Demand 4-8pm weekdays $0.1385
Supply charge $1.0879
Solar export $0.05

Any suggestions? Is our solar crap? NNE facing but have some trees we were saving to cut down as do shade solar at times.

 

[tuffstuff]

@mattiloo Get one of those Bluetooth units that fits on your meter and you can view what times of day you're using the most energy and then deduce what appliances are eating up the most power.

$1/day per person isn't crazy though is it?

 

[meepmeeprr]

@mattiloo 14kwh a day with a pool is good you won't do much better

 

[mattiloo]

@meepmeeprr Seems to be the case. How does our solar export look do you know? Gonna be quite a job to bring down 2 trees, but doable.

 

[hugosilva]

@mattiloo Solar to me looks pretty good for winter. Your production hours are smaller and even in full sun my solar doesn't produce as well in winter.

In summer we usually end up in credit and then that evens out for the year.

 

[mattiloo]

@hugosilva When ypu are in credit do ypu still have a bill?

 

[hariton]

@mattiloo They send you out a “bill” but it says you are in credit and the credit just sits there until you use it.

 

[mattiloo]

@hariton Wow! That's what we were hoping for, but our bill remains much the same in SE QLD summer. Sounds like we do need to get a saw out and try and save for tree surgeons.

 

[hugosilva]

@mattiloo Our usage is a lot lower than yours though. In summer we get about 35kw a day and our usage is about 5kw a day (5.2kw system).

A battery would be perfect for us but it's been really hard to get any companies to even reply to enquiries recently.

 

[cedd660]

@mattiloo Switch retailers.

Claim autoclave as work expense? Unsure what this is for.

For you health, longer term get ride of wood Hester. Won't save you electricity but will save you other bills.

Get rid of pool?

 

[mattiloo]

@cedd660 Comparison came out pretty equal
Autoclave already claimed as work expense
Wood burner used 3 x this winter.
Pool gonna have to stay

 

[lijie08]

@mattiloo Pools are a killer.
How old is the pump? A newer one might be a savings.
Get a cover/blanket - this may reduce the number of hours you need to run the pump as it will slow the chlorine denaturing.

 

[mattiloo]

@lijie08 It's possibly 30 years old. Unfortunately no funds at present to replace but will consider when we do, thanks. Cover - no funds at present and is a pretty big freeforn shape so would have to be custom made. Good idea tbough.

 

[aaron_boydstun]

@mattiloo My old neighbour just ripped his pool out one weekend then filled it in some time later. But if you are using it then there is no sense in getting rid of it just to save on electricity.

 

[widlast]

@mattiloo Look at https://www.iselect.com.au

I’m with AGL and iSelect got me 25 percent lower than the Victorian Default Offer.

 

[mattiloo]

@widlast Thanks just tried and cae back with our plan.

 

[widlast]

@mattiloo Be interesting to see what the result is. Admittedly, my electricity bill is still higher than this time last year, just not as high as it could be.

 

[lalady59]

@mattiloo If your hot water is electric put it on a timer. Mine is programmed to run from 11am - 4pm. I haven't paid shit for hot water since doing that. Put the pool pump on a timer also.

 

[ericro]

@mattiloo As a pool technician, if you can get away with it, run your pool filtration at night. Running the pool filtration and sanitizing your pool is a fruitless exercise as the sun will burn away a lot of the chlorine produced. If you use liquid chlorine and a doser, you will burn through more liquid chlorine, if you have a salt system, you will burn through cells faster. Also, people will run at night if they switch over to an off peak tariff. Of course this only applies if you have a quiet pump that doesn't annoy your neighbours. Avoid the variable speed pumps to save money. They are junk. Twice as expensive and need to be repaired or replaced twice as much as single speed pumps.

 

[mattiloo]

@ericro We can certainly try this, thanks. We have a salt water chlorinator if that makes any difference?