Electric Bill

[andressmtz6]

Hey, i recently built a PC, and ever since my electricity bill doubled, is this normal? I have a 850 watt psu and my build uses 450 watts

[Moonzy]

how often do you use it? 24/7?

 

some company tier their bill, the more you use, the more expensive per kWh is, so take note of that too

[Lurick]

450 watts is probably the max your PC will draw under load, unless you have some really old hardware that pulls that much at idle. How do you double your electric bill though because unless you're on some special rate plan I'm pretty doubtful it actually doubled.

[minibois]

Just now, andressmtz6 said:

Hey, i recently built a PC, and ever since my electricity bill doubled, is this normal? I have a 850 watt psu and my build uses 450 watts

Well I mean.. Depends on what amount of power you used before, right ?!  If you had no PC before-hand and now all of the sudden just use more power.. The bill will increase

You could use this calculator to kind of guesstimate how much your PC uses, in terms of money on the powerbill: https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/electricity-calculator.html

Just fill in the price of power, the amount of power your PC uses* and how long the PC is running.

 

* of course how much your PC uses is very variable. Depends on if the CPU and GPU is doing something, or if one (or neither) is really doing anything.. etc.

[dizmo]

Your PC doesn't use 450 watts all the time. Unless you're constantly folding it something, and even then, it's unlikely to be that high. Saying your power bill has doubled is useless without giving us the variables; what you paid before, what you pay per kWh, what else you use in your house, how long you use your PC for, etc etc. There's way too many variables for us to help you with such a simple post. 

3 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

how often do you use it? 24/7?

 

some company tier their bill, the more you use, the more expensive per kWh is, so take note of that too

Even if it's on 24/7 it shouldn't be that high. But, it depends on many things tjat he hasn't given us. 

[RadiatingLight]

We can't know with so little info. If your PC is drawing 450W 24/7 (meaning it's under load all the time) that's slightly less than 1Kwh every 2 hours. That means ~12Kwh per day = ~360kwh per month. Assuming you pay the US National average of $0.14 per kwh, having your computer drawing 450W all the time would lead to about a $50 increase in your electric bill.

 

Unless you're doing something like folding@home or bitcoin mining all the time, I doubt your PC uses 450W all the time.

[Moonzy]

9 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Even if it's on 24/7 it shouldn't be that high. But, it depends on many things tjat he hasn't given us. 

Ah geez I forgot not everyone loads their computer 100% like I do

But yeah, if he lives alone in an apartment with no AC, a PC could easily double his bill if he left it on, even idling a PC takes about 80W from the wall.

Couple that with tiered billing, easily explainable

[Intergalacticbits]

This is hard to answer without knowing what your monthly bill was before and do you now use an air conditioner or other things with the pc.

 

Check this weird electric use story. 

My bill used to be like $70.00 a month in the summer because I don't use any air conditioners at all.

 

So the last couple of months I've pretty much stopped watching TV (55" 4k with 5.1 surround hooked up to it) because everything on it is so horrible. I only got broadcast network TV.

Now I only use my iPad and Laptop for entertainment 90 percent of the time. Then just a couple hours gaming some days.

My bill has dropped to around $25.00 a month the last two months.

 

I didn't think my TV used that much electricity.  I'm thinking I should get rid of it now. Heck there isn't anything on it worth watching anyway.

 

 

[Roswell]

4 hours ago, Intergalacticbits said:

This is hard to answer without knowing what your monthly bill was before and do you now use an air conditioner or other things with the pc.

 

Check this weird electric use story. 

My bill used to be like $70.00 a month in the summer because I don't use any air conditioners at all.

 

So the last couple of months I've pretty much stopped watching TV (55" 4k with 5.1 surround hooked up to it) because everything on it is so horrible. I only got broadcast network TV.

Now I only use my iPad and Laptop for entertainment 90 percent of the time. Then just a couple hours gaming some days.

My bill has dropped to around $25.00 a month the last two months.

 

I didn't think my TV used that much electricity.  I'm thinking I should get rid of it now. Heck there isn't anything on it worth watching anyway.

 

 

Your TV isn’t the cause for a $25 drop. Even if you had a crazy inefficient TV, you’d only be paying 1-2 cents an hour to run it.

[PeachGr]

Just get a smart plug to answer your questions. Screen it's also 60w along with other peripherals it is considerable. Ido folding at home that's why it is that high

[Intergalacticbits]

14 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

Your TV isn’t the cause for a $25 drop. Even if you had a crazy inefficient TV, you’d only be paying 1-2 cents an hour to run it.

No, what I said was that it was a $45.00 per month drop the last two months.

I see what your saying but that is why it was weird to me. The only thing I've done differently is to stop watching the TV.

 

My TV uses 140 watts, 5.1 receiver 200 watts, sub woofer 100 watts, altogether really nothing.

I was watching a lot of TV before because of the covid-19 killing the US economy causing me to be home unemployed.

I tend to fall into a depression funk when I not working but still.  

I don't think I was watching it that much though. 

 

I like the lower bill but I wish I knew for sure if it was the TV.

 

 

[WereCatf]

9 minutes ago, Intergalacticbits said:

The only other thing I thought it could possibly be is that maybe one of the heating elements in my hot water heater burned out.

Leaving just one working but I haven't noticed any difference in the hot water?

You may not notice e.g. a 2 degree difference, but it'll immediately show in your electric bill. Heating, both for residential areas and for water, consumes a lot of power and every single degree matters.

 

EDIT: Came to think that you should check the temperature of the water in the tank. You should keep it at over 65C (149F) to keep Legionnaire bacteria from growing in the tank -- you don't want that to happen.

[Intergalacticbits]

15 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

You may not notice e.g. a 2 degree difference, but it'll immediately show in your electric bill. Heating, both for residential areas and for water, consumes a lot of power and every single degree matters.

Maybe 

It is a stand alone electric water heater with two elements.

In the past when one of the heating elements goes bad I notice it the first time I take a shower.

I got mountain well water and it turns ice cold right in the middle of showering.  

Haven't noticed anything like that yet but the lower bill directly coincides with the no TV watching.

Weird huh?

 

[Zenith_X1]

If you planned on getting a 3080 or 3090 in the future, just be aware that your power draw will go up.

[Kisai]

On 9/6/2020 at 1:32 PM, andressmtz6 said:

Hey, i recently built a PC, and ever since my electricity bill doubled, is this normal? I have a 850 watt psu and my build uses 450 watts

Turn the power management features on. Or manually make it sleep.

 

Like I kid you not, my BC Hydro bill overs around $30-$35, and the only thing's that run all the time are the fridge and the PC. It used to be more until the neighbor's unit was dismantled (which is another story for another time.)

 

[Vorg]

There is more to it then how much the computer pulls. Do you have swamp cooler or AC? If you have AC, how close to the room with the computer is the thermostat? In my case, the thermostat is in the hall right outside the room and even just having the computer on idle does tend to make the AC run a bit more. And whole house AC pulls a lot more power then most home computers.

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Vorg said:

There is more to it then how much the computer pulls. Do you have swamp cooler or AC? If you have AC, how close to the room with the computer is the thermostat? In my case, the thermostat is in the hall right outside the room and even just having the computer on idle does tend to make the AC run a bit more. And whole house AC pulls a lot more power then most home computers.

this is actually a good point

when a computer operates in an airconditioned room, the power the PC consum gets dumped as heat(for the most part), and then the AC has to pump that heat out to maintain the temperature, thus making it work harder and consume more electricity (heat pumps are not very efficient)

 

it's one of the main reasons why i moved my PC out of my room.

[Vorg]

Still have to keep the room the pc is in cool or it can't keep itself cool. The room my computer is in is well isolated with 1 outside block wall isolated on both inside and out. My computer can raise the room temp a couple of degrees or more at times. And that is with the vent full open. The air blows out into the hall right were the thermostat is. And if the AC didn't run more, the room could easily hit 85+ even though the thermostat is set to 75.