Ska's 28 Macro Algae Display

[marie]

Originally Posted by skabooya

... Did you know that there is a new residential conservation rate? It just started up Oct 1 of this year. Well you can imagine my ****yness when our electric bill went up an extra $100 because of this.
This is an incentive for people to conserve energy and to do this they are going to charge extra for power. So instead of power costing $0.06550 it is now going to cost in total $0.18 on average BUT it will depend. I quote "If you use less than 2260 kWh on a bi-monthly basis you will pay less than under the previous flat rate structure" it goes on to say "The new rate structure provides a price incentive to encourage conservation"
It says on the hydro website if you use more than 1350kWh you will pay 7.21cents/kwh until April 1 2009 at which time this price will go up to 8.21/kwh cents. But if you use less than 1350kWh then you only pay 5.95/kwh cents until April 1, 2009 when the price goes up to 6.35 cents per kwh and this is on top of the rate we are paying now which is a little over 6 cents...
.

Maybe I'm reading my bill wrong but I don't think it's "on top of the rate we are paying now which is a little over 6 cents"
My bill has been separated into 2 parts, before oct 1st and after oct 1 and nowhere after oct 1 is there an extra 6 cent charge just the $.059 and the $.072

Oh yea and I'm paying about $120 a month and I have 4 tanks running, 1 of them is my 175g

[skabooya]

Marie: That is why I called them yesterday to figure this out. It didnt make any sence to me. My bill says that under the normal rate of 0.06550/kWh i would have spent 76.05 last month. Which is what i would have had to pay before.

Under that it says Usage Charge step 1 and step 2 "Oct 01 to Oct 16 (residential conservation rate 1101) Basic charge: 16 days @ $ 0.12380/day"
Step 1 then goes on to charge me $21.23 and step 2 charges me 63.81 and then gst 8.29

Now the charge of my 75.05 for the normal usage plus step 1 and 2 and gst and the rider rate and the clean energy fund levy My total comes out to $174.79 for everything in my house.

So they basically charged me 3 times. Now, what i was told on the phone by these people was to wait until the november reading for a re-billing. She said that it would make more sense next month but If im paying a total of 18cents / kWh staying under the 1350 kWh line then i will be paying about 2Cents extra /kWh (20 cents total) if i go over that AND it will all change April 1 when the rates go up. SO then the norm would be 19 cents normally if i stay under the 1350 line and 21 cents if i go over.

And marie whats your secret to only paying that much for your tanks??
I currently have only one tank running (i tore down the other two) and its FW. I got rid of my hot tub, switched to cold water, changed all the bulbs in my house, etc etc etc and Im paying more now than what i did last year. WTF??? makes no sense to me. Please Please tell me your secret.

X-Treme
Is it wrong to have a heater running 24/7 ?? I thought that the temp would be regulated that way. Thats the way ive been doing it for years and my temps stay constant. When the temp goes over what i set it too on the heater then the heater shuts off until the temp falls below what i set it too and then it comes back on.
Please explain why its not a smart thing to do to run a heater on 24/7 im confused with this.

[X-Treme]

Well in your billing summary you are figuring out power usage for your heater RUNNING 24/7. Just because it is plugged in 24/7 doesn't mean it RUNS 24/7. Due to lighting and ambient temps, I would say that your heater actually RUNS (is turned on) 6 hours per day at the ABSOLUTE MAX. Therefore it only draws power for that amount of time. So you would use 600 watts per day rather than your calculated 2400watts.

[skabooya]

very true X-treme but even with those calculations i would only be saving a couple of bucks so i would still be paying over $100 a month for a 28gal tank which is outrageous to me. And you also need to remember that a heater isint completely turned off if it is still plugged in think of it as on standby. There is still some energy being used so that it can detect when it needs to be turned on or off. Its the same as a computer in standby or sleep mode. Technically its still on and using power but not as much.

[fkshiu]

Originally Posted by skabooya

Is it wrong to have a heater running 24/7 ?? I thought that the temp would be regulated that way. Thats the way ive been doing it for years and my temps stay constant. When the temp goes over what i set it too on the heater then the heater shuts off until the temp falls below what i set it too and then it comes back on.
Please explain why its not a smart thing to do to run a heater on 24/7 im confused with this.

What he means is that your heater is only drawing electricity (i.e. "ON") when the little red light is on. You may have it plugged in, but it's not drawing electricity 24/7. Therefore, you cannot say that your 50W heater is using 50W all day long as say your return pump would be.

[skabooya]

Ok i dont know what i was doing yesterday but i think i was typing in 18 instead of .18 or something.
So let me do these calculations online so you guys can make sure im doing it right. Math is not my best subject

Heater 100w
hk1 3.5w
hk2 4.5w
skimmer 10w
lights 160w

the first 4 are 24/7 so i will do them together. they come out to 118watts total divided by 1000 = 0.118kW

then I go 0.118 x 24hours x 0.18 cents x 31 days = $15.80

next: 160/1000 = 0.16kW 0.16kW x 8 x 0.18 x 31 = $7.14

15.80 + 7.14 = $22.94 a month.


That is much better than the $100+ i did yesterday. What the heck was i thinking for those equations? Wow.

[X-Treme]

You are still wrong with calculating that your heater will draw 100w 24/7. If you want a 24/7 figure I would go with 25w. (ie. drawing 100W 1/4 of the day)

[skabooya]

ok so im overestimating slightly. The point is that im not paying $100+ a month anymore. And if the heater isint on all that time then the price will be under $20 a month YAY!!!!

[skabooya]

Update: ... not really much to update other than to let people know im still here. Ive saved up about $525 now.. shesh this is gonna take me forever. The majority of the cash is going into our Newfoundland trip for this summer (family reunion on my hubbys side). My budget is $1200. I went to check out the prices today to see if prices changed... YUP! Everything went up by a lot. My tank costs just for setups are now and extra $200 total. WTF!!! And that doesnt include corals or fish. You have no idea how much it upsets me.
But anyway i managed to shave off $100 for a total of $1018.88 approximately which leaves me about $150 for coral and fish. Yikes.
Heres my new list of what to buy (but im not happy about the price increases for any of them)
Test Kit
20lbs Fiji pink substrate
HK1
HK2
50lbs Instant Ocean Salt (From the original 160gal mix)
100w Ebo Jagger heater
12inch proscraper (from original 24inch)
Tunze Protein Skimmer
Refractometer
Ocean Nutrition small pellets (from other more expensive brand)
Nova Extreme T5 HO 4x39 (price went up on this by a lot)
22lbs dead Rock from bulk reef supply

Corals I really want are:
Ice blue cloves, blue zoas or zoas with blue in them (maily light blue so they are easier to see), some pink zoas for contrast, Gemini Palys (because im a gemini ), Blue shrooms, Blue rics and rics with blue in them, pulsing xenia (the one that looks like it has a blue stripe going through its main stalks and fingers), Something that will move in the current like a hammer or elegance coral <puurrrddyy, and something that is freaky coloured like WOW possible acan or blasto.

Livestock:
2 true percs and possibly a coral beauty (my fav fish)
CUC snails and hermies and cleaner shrimp maybe.



A $200 increase in store prices made a lot of what I want unreachable, stupid economy or canadian/US doller thingie, whatever is ruining my plans BOOOO!!!