Re: STICKER SHOCK Not that profound, actually. We had a very old Carrier 4500 BTU unit cooling the entire house. Pre-energy efficient compressors and fans. We now have over 7000 BTU total capacity, but it's divided over 5 different units. There is hardly a time when any two units are on at the same time. When the kitchen is being used, the much larger living room unit is powerful enough to keep the kitchen cooled, but if the living room is not being used, the small kitchen unit is used and the living room a/c is off. Upstairs, the east-west orientation of the house provides sea and lagoon breezes most evenings and if we do need a/c, only the occupied bedroom needs to be cooled, as opposed to the old days when we had to cool the whole house. Also, all the units are SEER 13, which is pretty high on the Green List.
SIZE OF UNITS Coby, I wonder if you checked to see if the capacity of your a/c units was large enough for the cooling job they're being asked to do: if not, that could cause your consumption to be higher than it has to be for the same degree of cooling. Our units are well matched to the rooms they cool and, keeping two relatively large rooms cool during the day, and the bedroom cool all night, plus using a washer dryer two days a week, we still consumed just 683 KWH over the two month billing period. _______________ Mixz1, you may be more in the running for the high end consumption poster child than I am, but that little dance you do with the minisplits, cooling just the areas you need to, is also making a "green" contribution. Your consumption may even be the equivalent of ours, just applied over a much larger volume of air that has to be cooled.
Re: SIZE OF UNITS Wow.... you're doing something right.... if you have at least 1 a/c running more or less all the time yet have usage that low.... what brand are your mini splits and what temp do you keep them at? and I assume that you have the other standard appliances like fridge, tv, computer, etc.... you sure you aren't the one borrowing your neighbor's power :wink:
NOT ME! BUSTED! One thing that helps is that our apt is small, with three main rooms- only about 75 square meters- so there are fewer cubic meters of air to cool. We've got one "Trane," and two "Carriers." When they're running, they're set at about 27 degrees Celcius; about 28, at night. When it's a degree or two cooler outside, then the a/cs are also set a degree or so cooler, to keep them turning over. I run them at continuous, low fan speeds, and use the ceiling fans at the same time, more often than not. One thing that helps us save energy is that our apt is on the ground floor, tucked into the building, so little sunlight hits the walls and roof, meaning there is very little solar load for the a/cs to have to deal with. We have two laptops, and run them a total of about 16 computer hours/day; the refrigerator is new and its seals are good, the TV is on about three hours/day. We have the usual home entertainment equipment, and are often listening to music of one kind or another. I do a lot of little things to save electricity- most of which my wife ignores, finding them inconvenient, and hard to keep track of, anyway; for example, cooling only those parts of the house that we're currently using and (somewhat controversial, I know) turning everything off when we're going to be out of the apt; keeping doors to rooms shut when we're cooling any part of the apt, sealing the apt as well as possible to avoid any loss of cool air to the outside, not going into the refrigerator too often, and using a carafe for coffee so the coffee maker can be turned off as soon as the coffee is brewed. (No wonder she objects, I'm getting tired just typing the list!) The last thing I can think of is we dress very lightly, indoors. Sorry, Life, if I got a little carried away, there....
Re: NOT ME! 75 square meters vs. 245 square meters may explain my kw/h guzzle compared to your delicate sips.
RIGHT ON! Quoting me: Looks like I had that about right, Mixz1. Your place is 3.27 times the sq meters of ours (care to rent us a portion of it?), and I'll bet you've got one or two places in there with some high ceilings, as well, meaning you've got to chill a lot more air to have the same comfort level. See how 4X my consumption of 683 KWH compares, when your next bill comes out: I'll bet you're using even less than us, when everything is factored in.... I'd have been a "gonner," if I'd gotten that first bill you talked about, before you got busy sorting out your a/c, there. That's just about ten times bigger than anything ever dropped into my mailbox, with my name on it. Jim_in_Cancun, are you a "heavy hitter," too, when it comes to electricity: I haven't noticed you chiming in here, but I know you've got a ton of experience with all the quirks of life, in Cancun. I've got friends here who, as people who make their living off the internet, just accept that they will use a lot of electricity at home, running all their computers, etc., and that DAC is going to be their lot!
Got our bill today, the first since this thread started. Tariff 1C, 2207 kWh, 19 days in summer 43 days outside of summer. 5153 pesos Seems hell of a lot considering we hardly ever run the air con.
WOW! I feel for you, Steve. It's even worse, when you consider a third of that consumption was charged at the heavily subsidized, summer rate. I guess it could have hit nearer 7,000 pesos, if had been all winter rate. You may even give Mixz1 a run for his electric company money, this next time around! You run a lot of heavy electronics, there at Cancuncare, Centro, do you?
Re: WOW! Not really: - 1 desktop and 1 laptop which are rarely switched off but power save feature kicks in when not in use. - Large fridge freezer - TV probably 8 hrs per day - washing machine 2-3 times per week - about 4 lights all energy efficient bulbs in the evening, 2 overnight - 1 ceiling fan, 1 sometimes 2 upright fans during the day - 2 ceiling fans at night - Aircon, none during the day. We have central aircon for upstairs so have to cool 3 bedrooms even though we only use 2. Its switched on when Dani goes to bed about 7:30 and off when I go to bed around midnight. Unless it's really hot when it stays on all night. House is around 250 sq metres I would guess, equal size upstairs/downstairs. Doesn't sound too extravagant to me.
Re: WOW! Sounds like you need to check out your wiring for "problems"... On a side note, a friend used to have really high bills in his vacation rental even when no one was staying there.. we were convinced that someone was stealing power but could never find anything.. turns out that the wires behind the meter were the wrong sizes and were acting like heating elements, constantly burning off electricity, and grounding out where the casing had melted away... That being said, there are plenty of thieves and that same friend recently found out that the office he had been in for the past two years was supplying power to the house behind it. He only found out when the owner approached him with a 4,000 peso electricity bill, after the office had sat empty for a full cycle. He had assumed that he was just losing a lot of power to the machines in the office, but in hindsight about half of his electric bills were paying for the thieving neighbor's power.... so I always encourage anyone with bills that seem too high to go outside at night and switch off the main breaker to look for anyone else's lights going out.. or check if the meter is still spinning after you've unplugged and turned off everything in your place.
