Monthly cost to run a tank

[Coralgurl]

Originally Posted by Mike-fish

keep in mind when compairing to old bills that power prices have skyrocketed in the last year or so

I manage commercial properties and have budgeted 10% increases for the past 2 years for electricity and have been pretty bang on. Commercial rates are different than residential but the market is the same, I would expect to see some increase but not double at home. I watch my water billing as well and it's less than $50 a month.

Not complaining, was just surprised. Not sure where I could cut back..

[Coralgurl]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

Yah when you work it out over a period of year it really starts to add up, but 200/month for a 180 - do you know what the draw of your return pump is supposed to be? One of the things that shocked me when I started using the meter on my tank equipment was how much more power certain things were drawing that was advertised. My Deltec SC2560 skimmer is drawing more than double what it's spec sheet said it was supposed to.

I don't actually, will look into it. I will actually check all my equipment and run the same analysis others have done. Where do you find these handy meters?

[asylumdown]

This is the one I got: http://www.amazon.com/P3-Internation...s=energy+meter

It was super cheap on amazon prime delivered while we were in the states, but amazon has tons of other ones too. This one tells you your total KwH draw over a period of time, but it doesn't record max/min wattage draws, which I would have wanted. I actually had to physically check over the course of the day to see what wattage my lights were pulling at any given moment as they ramped up and down through their cycle. I also don't know if the power draw for my heaters was "normal", as it didn't tell me how many times they came on over the course of the day, or how long they stayed on, just their average kwh usage over a 24h period. On a cloudy, cold day, my house stays cooler, and on a sunny day the room the tank is in warms up a lot, so I'd likely need to leave the heaters plugged in to that meter for a couple of weeks to get a really good sense of it.

[Coralgurl]

Well, I thought I was on to something....I checked my spreadsheet again today and looked at my numbers from 2009 and 2010 and because 2011 was significantly lower thought maybe I had missed adding in some of the invoices. So I call Enmax, and between them and me, our numbers are out by a minimal amount. She did explain the rates in 2012 were higher than previous years (ok yes, this was noted by Mike-Fish). If I ignore 2012 and look at '09 & '10, the increase is not that significant ($50-75/month). Phew.... still going to pick up a meter and figure it out.

Sorry for the drama, but relieved that this isn't sucking the life out of me and changing it up won't make that much of a difference....