Food for thought about electricity

In January, 1979, we moved into our house at The Gap in Brisbane’s leafy west, having moved up here from Melbourne. It turned out to be a good move and we have been here ever since, with a few return trips back to Melbourne for holidays in the meantime.

Three months after moving in, as is the way with the world, we received our first electricity bill. The total was $40.45 – a lot of money in those days. On further inspection I found that the costs of each Kw/h of domestic power cost a tad over 4.5 cents, and hot water cost 2.1 cents per Kw/h. We were then a family of four.

Since then I have been keeping a spreadsheet of our power bills as they come in, and it is interesting to look at the graphs produced. Our actual consumption of power has reduced over the years, after reaching a peak during the children’s teen years (which comes as no surprise at all!) and the fact that we are now a family of only two.

The cost of electricity consumed has risen in waves over the years, as one would expect, as has the rate per Kw/h. The total actual cost per day, however, has dropped in recent years, due mainly to the installation of solar panels which is saving us around 40% of the total bill. This week the bill for the current quarter arrived, and I found the total cost of power consumed was now $346.85, before the solar rebate, and $204.85 after the rebate was applied. Gotta love that solar. The cost per Kw/h these days? Domestic: 27.8 cents, and hot water, 20.5 cents. What a difference!

The above is a graph showing our actual electricity consumption, from 1979 to Dec 2014. The top wiggly line is our consumption of Peak Power, and the bottom one is Hot Water. The black line running through each is the average over time. As you can see, now that our birds have flown the nest, our consumption has decreased a little from about 1995, and the little box that says “Climate Smart Installed” is the same approximately the same date that we had our eight solar panels installed. It is easy to see the dip in consumption after that!

As I said earlier, the rate when we started in 1979 was a tad over 4.5 cents for domestic power, and hot water cost 2.1 cents per Kw/h. Big difference these days! We have to balance this against what it actually costs US to use that power.

A lot of the increases we saw, I think, are reflected in the fact that we own more and more electrical and electronic equipment in our home. In 1979 we had a washing machine, a microwave, and a small (cathode ray) television set. Oh yes, and a telephone sitting on the desk in the study. I seem to remember it was an Ericofon at one stage – it looked like a vase, with the dial (yes a dial) set in the base – remember those? Nowadays, as we became older and a little better off, we now have a whole host of things in our household to chew up electricity at a more alarming rate. If our usage was now as it was then, our power costs would be much lower! But that’s the way of life in the western world, and we have made the rod for our own backs, so we have only ourselves to blame.

The cost per day is actually going down. Wonders will never cease! The wild fluctuations in recent years is caused by the varying amount of solar power generated and being either used or fed back into the grid.

What changes have you seen in your electricity prices over the years? Do you struggle to pay your bills or are they decent? Tell us below.