Monthly cost to run a tank

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by Oilers

I just looked at my Epcor bill for this month and it says $140 for electricity even though only $90 is for the electricity, the rest is BS fees. I wonder what the bill was like before the tanks.

I just switched from Epcor to Enmax for that reason, was paying over $100 just in fees. Our saving from just switching providers is quite substantial.

[Pan]

Originally Posted by lockrookie

Yes but they can charge you a fee to dig up records too

The way around that is to tell them you have someone doing an energy audit, I got pdf's sent to email. Paper copies would have cost me. Same with the Gas company.

That was a couple years ago though, perhaps things have changed.

incidentally enmax has its share of bs fees as well. So to does direct energy for that matter.

[whatcaneyedo]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

I just finished running the power meter on all the various power bars hooked up to my tank. Here's the results:

My 8 radions are collectively drawing 8.9 kWh of power per day

The power bar that runs my return pump, skimmer, and various other powerheads draws 6.14 kWh per day

The power bar that runs my heaters, reactor pump, and a couple more powerheads is drawing 4.77 kWh per day.

In total, my tank is drawing 19.81 kWh per day, or 594.3 kWh in a 30 day month. Our last month's power bill switched rates half way through, so taking the halfway point between the two rates ($0.085/kWh), my tank is costing roughly $50/month in electricity to run.

I have to say I'm surprised by this, I thought it would be lower. I'm going to have to look in to ways to get the total draw down. I might have to consider removing two of the radions.

I crunched the numbers on my 240gal system with 3 MH (double ended drawing about 312w each) and came up with roughly $75/month. BC Hydro gives us the first 1332kWh at $.068/kWh and then our rate jumps to $.1019kWh so I had to do some proportioning and came up with about $.082/kWh as being our average rate.

[Oilers]

Originally Posted by sphelps

I just switched from Epcor to Enmax for that reason, was paying over $100 just in fees. Our saving from just switching providers is quite substantial.

I think they will ALL start charging BS fees sooner or later. If one can do it and get away with it, the others will join soon enough. Just like the airlines charging us luggage fees, I think Westjet hasn't done so yet but I think they will as well in the future.

[madchild]

My tank costs about $30 a month in utilities.. much much more in supplies and other things I buy for it...

[Coralgurl]

Yikes! I keep an annual budget spreadsheet and have 4 years saved. Checked my annual costs for enmax today and for 2011 and 2012 and my bill increased $2300 for the year or just shy of $200 a month since setting up my 180 gl. Nothing else has changed in my house. My monthly bills are just shy of $400 a month right now. Most of my equipment was bought new with the exception of the return pump.

Chatting tonight about downsizing to one tank and combining the 2 I have.

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by Coralgurl

Yikes! I keep an annual budget spreadsheet and have 4 years saved. Checked my annual costs for enmax today and for 2011 and 2012 and my bill increased $2300 for the year or just shy of $200 a month since setting up my 180 gl. Nothing else has changed in my house. My monthly bills are just shy of $400 a month right now. Most of my equipment was bought new with the exception of the return pump.

Chatting tonight about downsizing to one tank and combining the 2 I have.

That's pretty high for a 180

I'm not entirely sure what my tank costs but we average around $200 total a month now and that's with fees. My tank is about 270 gallons with multiple pumps and such but I've always spent a little more up front for efficient equipment. I also have three additional fridges in the bar and a home office that gets used most days so realistically the tank should be less than $100 per month. One of these days I'll get around to measuring it but still working on cutting energy costs on it as it is.

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by Oilers

I think they will ALL start charging BS fees sooner or later. If one can do it and get away with it, the others will join soon enough. Just like the airlines charging us luggage fees, I think Westjet hasn't done so yet but I think they will as well in the future.

Maybe, but I'm pretty sure my previous experiences with Enmax suggest otherwise and Epcor has always been pretty bad. When we first moved out here it was the only option and perhaps why the fees where so high, when we found out we could switch we jumped on it right away.

[Mike-fish]

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

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Coralgurl

Yikes! I keep an annual budget spreadsheet and have 4 years saved. Checked my annual costs for enmax today and for 2011 and 2012 and my bill increased $2300 for the year or just shy of $200 a month since setting up my 180 gl. Nothing else has changed in my house. My monthly bills are just shy of $400 a month right now. Most of my equipment was bought new with the exception of the return pump.

Chatting tonight about downsizing to one tank and combining the 2 I have.

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.