Solar Panels

I was a little bit scared to ask - are those figures monthly or quarterly?

Not to judge - I honestly don't know what it cost in Aus - it sounds completely unaffordable - I thought ours was high here in the UK!

That's for two months

Two months ! Criminy, that's even worse.



Are you talking about the cost of electricity or the cost to install solar power ?

Stewie

The cost of electricity - sorry I should have specified. I'm curious what the average family with an aircon and the usual appliances would pay.

Mal on average we pay $0.25/kWh and $0.80/day supply charge

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/graph-o ... orld-24207 couple of years old (2011) but gives a good comparison.

As for an average of 25c/kWh and 80c/day supply - I wish! We pay ~36c/kWh and $1.40 a day supply. But that's the price to pay to not live in a major city I suppose.

Our is far from average most families (from what I've been told) that don't run spas and reverse cycle air con/heaters 24hrs a day would average under $300.. Like Kat said she was shocked to get a $550 bill with reverse cycle running.

We've had big bills for a long time with both a pool and spa at our last house and reverse cycle running. We've always used the theory that what the point of having a $15000 air con/Heater and a $10000 spa that you don't use!!! We've just always factor it into our budget and it's not a shock or surprise for us but it's definitely an area now that we want to look into with the solar being a good starting point. When you break it down $1500/60 days = $25 a day /24 hours = $1.04 cents per hour including fees
Now it doesn't seem as excessive and for that we can run the spa and heater/air con. 24hrs a day if we want to..

MalSannie what do you pay per KWh over there and is there also a day supply rate as well as in per Seano's post above ?
Where do you live Seano ? That seems quite high. I didn't realise there was such a discrepancy between rural and city elect. rates.

Stewie

Wow Seano. I didn't think it was that high in Aus even Rural

I will move any further post to my thread for anyone who is interested in following our progress rather than take over this thread
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=64854

Interesting had a good look at our last bill thought id share the findings I estimated it to be approx $1500 crazy I know...our goal is to reduce this significantly. We budget on $750 a month for electricity currently (this is what our bills at our last house were) and want to see how much of this we can keep in our pocket (and then use to pay off our solar panels)

We've installed our solar panels now and are now working on ways to reduce our consumption and utilise the solar power to the maximum eg moving consumption to day time hours where possible eg washing machine

Anyone interested in our progress can follow on my thread
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=64854

I'm in Dubbo. So not exactly far out rural, but that's how it goes...

The few major retailers are all on par, I'm with AGL as they have the highest solar feed in tariff - 8c/kWh, others offer 0, some are 5-6c so AGL works out best as we have 7.5kw and fed back in about 7000kwh last year.

There are some smaller retailers that will offer low 30's c/kWh, but no feed-in, and no customer service or billing support from what I've heard.

End of the day, we're all over a barrel, and not too much you can do - solar, economizing, and reducing can only help so much.

Yes seano you're too right - we're all held over a barrel

I didn't actually know what our electricity tarifs were per kw - and it took me forever to find some info now - they sure don't advertise it:
27.39p daily service charge, 17.414p day kWh and 8.306p night kWh
so if using 1.8 as exchange rate:
49.30c daily service charge, 31.34c day kWh and 14.95c night kWh

I know what I pay for month for both gas and electricity £167 - they sort of average the payments out over a year. So that is roughly $601 for 2 months for both gas and leccy.

In winter our gas usage is much higher as the central heating is on permanently more or less and the water the instant heating boiler needs to warm up is freezing (well almost!)cold. The days are dramatically shorter too so you end up using more electricity. Most of us don't have aircons nor swimming pools though

Hi Mal being in the UK what size house do you live in?

I suspect us Aussies would have quite large houses in comparison.

People often forget the costs involved to run a 40sq house. It isn't cheap. Just because you can buy the house cheap doesn't mean you can afford to run it.

Yes that is very true houses on average are much smaller here - probably half the size of the one we're building in Perth (mostly older houses here are sold on number of rooms rather than total size lol) - but I wouldn't call houses in Aus cheap by any stretch of the imagination!

Lol sold by rooms. Too funny.

It is yes - I have a 'brochure' of our house from when we bought it, it has 'approximate' sizes for the main rooms, but nothing for things like the landing/stairs/entry etc. It can also be comical what is sometimes referred to as bedrooms - ours was sold as a 3 bedroom but in reality the 3rd room is too small to be a comfortable room for anyone older than 5! We use it as our study and it is definitely enough for us as we don't have kids - but we found it amusing none the less.

Anyway - I have now well and truly taken cupcakes' thread off topic - sorry cupcakes!!!

We found the spa didn't make much difference to our bill but the increase was the reverse cycle heater and the solar hot water booster. Hoping to heat the house during the day to keep the chill away at night once our solar panels are on!!

Which is considered better for WA conditions - solar hot water with electrical booster or gas instant hot water?

It's gonna cost you either way...Our gas bill is literally just the service charge. Only use it for the stove.was only $30 I think so offsets the large electricity bill....we were wishing we got gas booster but after talking to our friends I think it would be a similar cost!