My husband and I live in an area of SA that has loads of sunshine summer and winter, yet our account always comes in high as in we have 5-6 people living in the home. We have our 11 solar panels which we have cleaned twice a year for maximum service. During summer we do use the aircon as my husband has Multiple Sclerosis and MS patients should not get over heated and temps can get up to 45c regularly. Once cool we use ceiling fans and only use ceiling fans at night when sleeping.
At night we run two smart TVs and we both sit with a led lamp on (no other lights on in the house). We have a new fridge/freezer, only use our dishwasher every other day, have 2 loads of washing a week, don't own a dryer as we live in the Riverland and the weather is pretty perfect. One tv is switched off at the wall the other is left on for occasional recording of shows. So if theory we would appear to be low energy users, BUT our bills show we use energy for a household of 5-6 people! We are still on 60c feed in tariff. But our bill before last showed we had doubled our energy usage for the same last year. Jumping from 24.14 kWh to 51.70kWh. We don't use electric blankets and our only heating is reverse cycle aircon which would be used for an hour, maybe two (but not every night) to heat the room before we settle in for the night (we have quilts that we use instead of turning on the aircon). We have solar hot water with electric backup, which during summer we turn off the backup to conserve energy.
i am truly at my wits end to work out why we are paying $500-$600 per quarter for 2 people and that's with a guaranteed 7% discount on the plan we're on and around $300 in solar credits. I just don't know what else we can do. Are there companies around that can audit your home energy usage, as in come to your home and physically check what is happening. I have just contacted a solar company to come and check that our inverter and panels are working correctly. I'd appreciate any thoughts.
