Aircon Usage - Utility Bills - Best Practices

[ElBuitre]

Dear All,

I just moved to Singapore a few weeks ago and I moved to my own place last week.
It is a 2011 condo - The unit is approximately 1000sq ft and it has 4 A/C boxes: One in the master bedroom, one in the small bedroom/studio, two in the living room.

Hot water is only available in the two toilets and only if I switched the heater on.
As far as the kitchen is concern, it works with gas tanks, so no electricity involved.

I live alone, I cook generally 4-5 times a week, and I am out from the flat from Monday to Friday - 8AM 7PM approximately.

From next week, SP Services will change the contract under my name, so I will be starting paying for the utilities myself, and on this point I always heard very contrasting opinions!

The way I use the aircon is: In the living room when I am there, just one box.
25C, Minimum Speed.
In all the other room is off.

Then I shut it down, I go in the bedroom and I turn the box on with the same settings.
It never goes below 25 and rarely with more than the minimum speed (1/5).
No other boxes are ever used.

Lights is usually off in every room apart the one where I am staying, TV and laptops are on.

I do approximately 2 laundries a week, no dryer is being used.

---

People have been telling me any amount from 100 to 350, do you have any idea of the ballpark I will fall in to?

Thanks!

[x9200]

It is the compressor in the external units that eats up the majority of the energy so keeping the wall units at low fan speed will unlikely make any significant difference. Actually, depending on the room layout I can imagine you may have higher energy consumption at the lower speeds as the air does not mix up sufficiently in the room to reach the sensor in the wall unit, and tell it, hey, down there it's already cold enough.

Further to this, what are you saying is, you are going to use the aircon 13h a day during the weekdays and probably more during weekends. I think you have a good chance to exceed the $350 bill.

[ElBuitre]

Thank you very much.
The previous tenants had an average utilization of 150SGD but I cannot tell the way they were using the aircon!

I will see in the next 2-3 months how this all will be looking like.

[PNGMK]

Your mileage will most likely follow the previous tenants unless they never used the aircon which seems unlikely.

[taxico]

based on my 2016 usage/billing....

my wife and i live alone. we don't cook. our place is relatively well insulated.

we have an a/c in every room, 1 in the dining room, and 2 in the living room. they are mostly of the 2-to-1 types, some are encased within the wall/ceiling.

except from 7am to 10am, there is always at least 1 a/c turned on, at an indicated 23 degrees C. i would estimate we run 2 a/cs only about 25% of the time.

besides a fridge and 4 air purifiers, we also have an RO machine that is continuously powering an internal chilling and heating element. i have a habit of keeping a big TV screen running almost constantly, either to a show or a digital aquarium display. a lot of the lights in our place are fitted with filament bulbs...

the wife takes plenty of long, hot showers. i don't. we use the same bathroom for showering/baths so i need only heat up one heater. i will otherwise, use my own bathroom for everything else.

our SP bill is about $250 when we stay in singapore for a full month.

when my wife isn't around, and i reduce the use of a/c and don't use the heater much - if i turn it on only during one 10 minute shower, it stays heated for at least 2 days, and i also usually use just 1 a/c (maybe 19 out of 24 hours every day) when i'm slumming it out alone.

then my power bill goes down to about $150. i daresay the heater guzzles more money than the a/c!

[ElBuitre]

Just FYI my first bill has been of 79.7$ for the period 28th of June - 23rd of July, So I would say that for the full month it should have been around 100$.

[ProvenPracticalFlexible]

I pay about 50$ more when I use the air conditioner in the summer.

When is summer in Singapore? Interested to know.

[singaporeflyer]

I pay about 50$ more when I use the air conditioner in the summer.

When is summer in Singapore? Interested to know.

Usually march - july is dry compared to rest of the months.

[ProvenPracticalFlexible]

Feb is also dry. But is that "summer" when someone would spend 50$ extra on aircon?

[Max Headroom]

I reckon the dog days here are March/April/May. Hardly any wind, fewer squalls than normal, low precipitation all around. Greenery and grassy patches turn brown. Hot and dry.

Once prevailing winds swing from NE to SW, the humidity creeps up, resulting in hot and sticky conditions. This is when our aircon maxes out.

[the observer]

Lol, some 4 year old thread coming alive due to some bot posting gibberish abt their a/c servicing co.

Anyway in all seriousness, do check out SP wholesale rates. Average for this year has been cheaper than all the other electricity providers.

https://community.whatcard.sg/t/how-yo ... -rates/861

Alas I’m still stuck in a crappy contract with another provider for the next few months.

[x9200]

Lol, some 4 year old thread coming alive due to some bot posting gibberish abt their a/c servicing co.

Anyway in all seriousness, do check out SP wholesale rates. Average for this year has been cheaper than all the other electricity providers.

https://community.whatcard.sg/t/how-yo ... -rates/861

Alas I’m still stuck in a crappy contract with another provider for the next few months.

Is there any place where one can read these ech 30 min wholesale prices and not some historical data for each month of 2019 only?

[the observer]

Not that I know of for 2020, as of now. Maybe it’ll be published in Jan2021.

In any case, this is akin to a punt on lower energy prices, + without a contract/lock in.

[ProvenPracticalFlexible]

There's a link in that article. https://www.emcsg.com/marketdata/priceinformation

There you can see all the details on any selected price. And from a quick look it really can vary a lot during same day. From 6c to 30c per. Compared to my current omh 22% discount price which gives 16.8c. But probably true that most cases overall it would become cheaper.

Not sure if SP will charge some fixed monthly fees for the whole sale price.

[ProvenPracticalFlexible]

Now that I looked a bit more it's really the weekday afternoon when the price jumps up all the way to 80-90c. So for night time Aircon users it probably will be a good deal.