In my capacity as a radio “energy expert”, I was recently taken to task on how much electricity I used in my home. Fortunately I had a photo on my phone of our recent statement which I used as “exhibit A” to present my case. During the discussion I didn’t go into the detail that I will present here, however, suffice to say that my home’s electricity statement appears to identify our daily use to be in the order of 3 kilowatt hours. When asked, I estimated the daily household consumption of another person, who was in the discussion, at around 15 kilowatt hours per day. As any successful magic trick may impress, I was awarded some status elevation when he checked his quarterly bill on his phone and advised the discussion that his household was using 15.8 kilowatt hours per day. Whilst phones’ may well be ingenious allowing us access to all this information within seconds, knowing some basic detail, ie. that the average Australian home uses between 12 and 18 kilowa
tt hours per day and then guesstimating an average family’s daily consumption at 15 kW per day is not rocket science.
It would appear from the snapshot, see picture 1, that our family’s daily consumption was 3.01 kilowatt hours per day during the billing period and that during the corresponding time last year we used only 2.24 kilowatt hours per day. A quick glance at the bill overview also appears to have us being paid $1,233.28 (see pic 2) for the energy were exported to the grid, however, whilst the figures are correct, the interpretation thereof, is not. That is, none of the above assumptions, seemingly supported by the data, is even remotely true.
Since the devil is in the detail, let’s get into the detail.
It’s important to note that our energy consumption is fairly consistent throughout the seasons. I say fairly consistent because the seasons aren’t completely consistent, but, generally within any seasonal quarterly bill, our energy consumption has been consistently similar with very little variation since we moved into our home more than 20 years ago.
Even being heavily armed with my quarterly electricity statement, I would not present to any court that we had consumed only 3.01 kilowatt hours of energy as a daily average during the billing period. The details are that those 3.01 kilowatt hours are merely the amount of energy that our household purchased from the grid.
Let me explain.
Because we have a 6kW solar system and we live in a zone that experiences high solar radiation, the greater majority of the electricity we consume through the day is supplied by the sun. The energy that we pull from the grid is done during times when the sun is denied access to the panels which include daytime hours when the sky is overcast and all of our night-time usage. To accurately calculate the amount of electricity that we consumed through the day, that is, a full 24 hour period, we would need to add the daytime energy that we had consumed that the sun had supplied onto those averaged daily 3.01 kilowatt hour to more accurately represent the electrical energy that we generally consumed during an averaged 24 hour period. Those amounts would change daily but may be in the order of 1 to 2 kilowatt hours per day. This means that our home consumes more accurately 4 to 5 kilowatt hours per day. But that’s still not the end of the story. We have a gas stove which usually gets used at least once a day which would add to our daily energy consumption. On the rare occasion, and usually only after several days of very cold weather, we may light up our wood stove in the living area. Under ideal conditions, ie. using the correct wood, (iron bark) with at least 3 years of drying time will produce the heat energy equivalent to that produced by an 8kw heater. If we do start a fire, it generally runs for several hours. Under ideal conditions, which never exist, even only working for eg. 5 hours, an efficiently burning wood heater is not only using 40 kilowatt hours of energy stored in the wood, but significantly more than that because there are significant inefficiencies in these types of combustion heaters. Let’s add a little more as the chainsaw used to cut the wood uses energy to operate and we haven’t factored in energy consumed during transport not the energy used to produce and transport the chainsaw.
Our family uses more than the alleged 3 kilowatt hours of energy per day as not all our families energy consumption is restricted to the home. Whilst my wife and I are “empty nesters”, we have three daughters and the five of us have motor vehicles. I also have equipment used to maintain our property which includes several petrol mowers, a commercial finishing mower and a 55 horsepower tractor with a slasher. They all use energy including the little consumed by the whipper snipper. There are many energy costs generally hidden from view and therefore not factored in.
If you eat food, and let’s face it, most people do, then there are production energy costs to add as well as packaging and transport energy costs. Everyone uses more energy than they think. Actually, everyone uses a lot more energy than they think.
Then there is the statement that appears to have claimed that we had been paid $1,233.28 for the energy that we exported into the grid during this quarter. That is not true either. We really got paid $985.03 for the electrical energy we exported. The extra $248.25 involved two components one of $50 and the second of $198.25 being government contributions that have nothing to do with energy in or energy out.
The reality is that everyone uses a lot more energy than they think and they get paid a lot less than other people think. The reason I suggest that generally people are quite unaware of the amount of energy that they consume is because few people look into the detail, and … the devil is always in the detail.
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Moreton Bay residents can access weekly tips from John on Community Radio 101.5 FM Friday Mornings at 10:10am
John Lynn