Having the A/C on last night was wonderful! So cool plus nice and quiet. But I did forget to mention one thing. As Doug mentioned in his comment from the previous post, electricity here is very expensive. It's one of the main reasons most people don't have a/c in their house. Depending on where your house is located and how far up the mountain it sits, you really don't need a/c most of the time. If you're up high, then the breeze is pretty good except for August and September, it was darn right hot and no breeze. But, anyway, WAPA (Water and Power Authority) charges an insane rate for electricity. Last summer when the gas prices were the highest, the rate was around 45 cents a kilowatt. In the states it's around 6 to 10 cents a kilowatt. I'm not sure what the current rate is right now. I haven't seen a bill from our previous place since last August and we haven't gotten our first one yet from the new place. I've heard the rate has gone down some, but not sure how much.
I read online that a medium A/C unit uses 1 kilowatt an hour, so if we run it for 8 hours at night for the whole month, depending on the rate, it may cost us close to $100 a month to run the A/C. So we're going to have to be very cautious about how often we use it or just chalk it up to another one of the expenses of livin in da islands.
2 comments:
On the WAPA bill it shows a daily average consumption - mine runs between 9-10 kw a day and is about $90 mo. but last year the fuel surcharge LEAC had it up over $130.
Definitely replace anything you can with CFL bulbs - and turn off the power on any appliances that have a stealth power mode like coffee makers with clocks, LCD displays, DVD,TV, etc. when you are not using them you may be able to knock off 2-3 kw daily and use the trade off for AC.
The Capt has a good point that we all get a little wasteful of energy...I make a habit of unplugging coffee and other "ready to go" small appliances...big screen TVs are are a uber power hog...shockingly so along with PC's. On the other hand ain't it nice to sleep with ac...worth every penny and then some. They really should educate the customers about the cost of a delivered KW...cost of power generation at the plant per KW is probably a lot lower than most folks think.
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