Help! $7,200 power bill

That’s ~80kWh/day. You’re not growing hydroponic … tomatoes, by any chance?

Follow the previous advice about checking each individual appliance and watching the meter. Pay particular attention to heating and cooling loads. If all appears normal, someone is stealing your electricity.

Interesting to hear regarding the convenience stores. Our apartment is 102 ping so definitely on the larger side. However, we only have 6 split AC units with 2 compressors outside. I would think a convenience store would be running more than this, or at least equal to.

102 ping is huge!! If those AC is running all the time then the draw is going to be significant. The capacity of the compressor unit will also be fairly large, probably more than 3 tons. It is better to have smaller units in each room so that the cooling capacity is properly utilized.

Most convenience store is no more than 20 pings.

“only” :smiley:

Building companies pay no attention whatsoever to energy efficiency here. Your total aircon (maximum) load is probably about 10kW. Depending on your settings and usage, that could easily amount to 50+kWh/day. The rest is your household appliances.

Also, check whether your bill includes public electricity - that’s the energy [strike]used[/strike]wasted on the public areas of your building and its amenities, which in “upscale” residences can be absolutely enormous. We used to get regularly billed more than our domestic consumption so that the idiot management company could blast cold air out of the lobby doors and flush tonnes of hot water from the spa down the drain.

If your apartment is that large, consider applying for a demand based billing scheme that uses a smart meter. Your rate will be lower at night compared to during the day and you could save a lot of money that way.

We run two units, which unfortunately corresponds to two seperate compressors, all day long during the day. I would think a demand basded scheme would cost me more money this way.

Either switch to a small unit in the space that you use more often, or move. If it is a place of business then unfortunately you’ll have to suck it up as the cost of doing business.

Your best solution, I’m afraid, would be to move house.

EDIT: ah, TL already said that.

Well, I am quite happy with where I live and am certainly not willing to move for this. I am mostly wondering if perhaps there was a mistake made or if this sounds reasonable given the size/number of units running. I will start looking for ways to knock this down a bit though!

Yea, replace the unit with a smaller one, or big units with inverter technology. Cool only the space you use, not the whole house.

Good God! 20k for aircon??? Haha thats just silly.

I have my 55 ping flat cooled down to 21c all summer through one aircon system shared by the whole building. It costs abb NT$4,500 per month, however it runs 24/7 and cools everything inside down.

This information looks incomplete.
Please, elaborate!
NTD 4,500 x 12 adding up to NT$ 54000 per year.

Or, you pay 4,500 for July and 4,500 for August which would leave you with an aircon bill of NT$ 9000 for those two month. Sounds too good to be true.

Do you have to pay for all the other months? How much?

I think its on 5 months per year. We pay a share of the total costs. Power for the system, our lights, washing machine, fridge, and dish washer comes to app. 800 per month.

Poor other guys in your building are probably not understanding, as they sweat profusely, how they can get such a large bill when they hardly use their a/c.
I am waiting for an Apple Daily feature :slight_smile:

I would think they all use it as much as us.

I don’t think many (or barely anyone) set their AC at 21C. Unless of course the temp doesn’t actually get down to 21C in your apartment. If it did I would be wearing a coat. This is why apartments should be on split meters (not a shared meter). I would not like to be your neighbor.

I can’t even fathom a 20,000NT (2 month) bill. I also can’t fathom a 100 ping apartment unless it has several floors. It’s probably nice to have that kind of space although it would be too big for a single guy like myself. We have up to 6 AC’s running at our buxiban for anywhere between 2-8 hours a day and we barely crack 10K AFAIK at the summer peak.

Some landlords like to split their meter with many apartment units, might be because they don’t want to pay the setup fee or something.

Yes, they are being cheap up front and costing everyone more down the road. Apts shouldn’t be shared because some damn foreigner will run his AC at max all day. :slight_smile:

Ok, for us, the system is that we get ice cold liquid in some pipes. They go into some local units, one in each room. We run the system at minimum, however it is very cool.