Know what your energy costs

Category: Energy

Topic: energy consumption

A large number of schemes have historically allowed their strata manger to automatically pay utility bills without them being sighted and approved for payment by the treasurer. Now is the time to stop that practice. You may still allow them to be paid automatically, but you need to see the bills to audit your usage and monitor your progress. It will also help you discover any abnormal seasonal variations.

Electricity

Your common property will have one or more meters servicing different areas or equipment. You receive an electricity bill for each meter. The type of electricity supply contract for each meter will vary, depending primarily on the annual level of consumption and whether or not some kind of smart meter is installed. Depending on the type of meter installed, you will be billed

  • a flat rate per kilowatt hour
  • a different rate per kilowatt hour depending on the time of day the energy is consumed (e.g. peak, shoulder, off-peak)

The following information from different energy suppliers explains your electricity bill in more detail:

Analysis of your bills for at least the previous 12 months will give you a picture of your total energy consumption, any seasonal variations, and time of day usage if you have a smart meter.

If you want to go further and you have a smart meter, you can analyse your consumption and progress on a daily basis with the online WebGraphs product. Since the data from your smart meter is communicated and updated on a daily basis, WebGraphs allows you to analyse your consumption in more depth, benchmark your current performance against historical data, identify areas where improvements should be made, and immediately see the benefits of any energy saving initiatives you put in place.

Sample WebGraphs reports:

Not everyone will be able to take advantage of this product. Contact Testing & Certification Australia to determine your eligibility and find out more.

Gas

Gas prices in NSW are regulated by government legislation. View the current regulated rates.

The most common uses of gas on common property are

For most centralised gas hot water systems:

  • the gas needed to provide hot water is centrally metered at the hot water system
  • each apartment is fitted with a water meter at the apartment’s hot water entry point which registers the volume of (hot) water flowing into the apartment
  • a water meter on the centralised hot water system also records the volume of cold water entering at the inlet
  • the gas distributor calculates the amount of gas used to heat the water, and charges each customer in the complex based on how much hot water they have used
  • the water usage is multiplied by a ‘common factor’, which varies from quarter to quarter, depending on how much gas has been used to heat the total volume of water for the building
  • The common factor applied to the billing quarter will be listed on the bill, usually below or beside the meter readings

Some points to note from the above:

  • the owners corporation does not pay for the gas, individual residents do
  • even if the cost per MJ of gas and a resident’s quarterly use of hot water remained constant, the application of a different common factor each quarter can result in different costs

Some buildings don't meter individual apartment consumption and apportion gas costs according to unit entitlements. This is obviously even less satisfactory as it is not based on use.

Last Updated: 
Mon, 07/11/2011