My family and I have been wanting to reduce our electric bill. We don't usually pay much, but since it's summer and the heat is intense, we have had to have our AC on 24/7. I've heard of services that offer pay as you go electricity, but I have no experience with it or what it entails. Does anyone have experience with such things?
I imagine it costs more as companies have to install a meter. If you own the property you can do it, but not if you rent. In the UK people do have prepaid meters and they pay more per unit, and then have to top up at a shop on a card before they run out. It's not convenient, and usually is for people on benefits or have little money. You can't switch back either, so I would probably not do it if I were you. If you own a property and then sell it on, it would not be helpful on a sale. I remember being at my friend's house and the television stopped suddenly because you don't actually know how much electricity you are using.
We had one up until three years ago. It was a type of key that you took to a shop and put money on and then when the money got low (or in some cases ran out) you would take it back to the shop and put more money on it. We were putting £10.00 a week on ours on a normal week. Now we have a quarterly meter and that works out to roughly the same price.
It's in my country in certain areas. You purchase a certain amount of kilowatt hours for usage the system if fitted with a warning mechanism to alert the customers when the hours are nearing a low level so that they will have time to top up before the hours run out. Something similar to buying airtime for your telephone.
I had a prepaid meter installed because I'd heard people say they save more money. For me that and not having any more inflated bills is what got me to switch. Does it save money? It certainly can. If you find out you are spending more money per month then you'll have to find out what you need to do to cut your costs.
My electric company offered something like this, but there was an upfront cost to getting the meter. It was somewhere between 50 and 100 dollars. Also, I don't tend to turn my AC on unless there is a critical need for it, it is usually only a few hours per day. The electric company said they would manually increase the temp in the home during critical time periods when electric use was at it's peak. I am not sure if I want them to do this, if it is really hot out the AC doesnt work all that well to begin with. All in all, I decided not to go with the program. Maybe if the meter was free I would try it...but there are too many unknowns.
Because there's no meter at home, we couldn't really trace the amount of electricity consumed in our household. But after years of paying for our bills, we've pretty much approximated the amount we have to pay each month. It's rare for our utility company to give rebates, too. Consumers do have an option to pre-arrange their payment method with the provider so that they'd be encouraged not to use electricity beyond what they've already paid for. The unconsumed portion can be carried over to the next bill.
Do you live in an area where you can ask the vendor to "average" your usage/bills? Although I don't use it, our electric company allows customers the choice of averaging their bills for a year at a time. They calculate your usage for the past year, for example, and then divide that by 12 months to find an average, so that your amount owed stays fairly level throughout the year (including those hot summer months.) For our family, the low months of $25-40 are a welcome relief after paying $175-250 per month in the 3 hottest summer months. So it is better for our budget to leave it the way it is currently-just paying as we go.
I have used both services, the one that you consume electricity and get served bill at end of the month and the prepaid which is same as pay as you go. In pay as you go you buy the amount of unit of power you need and load it into the loadable meter and use until it's exhausted. Then you are out of power until you recharge. You can manage your consumption better under pay as you go.
Our electricity provider have started offering prepaid electricity more than two years ago but it hasn't really caught on. It's probably the inconvenience of having to load each time you run out of power. I personally don't think I will benefit from this arrangement as my consumption will still be the same whether it's pay as you go or postpaid. It's the service provider that will actually benefit more from this arrangement because this will practically eliminate the possibility that their customers will run away from their bill. The loading system in my country isn't exactly perfect and it would be very stressful to deal with loads that did not actually load on your account but were charged to you just the same.
We never have that in our country. Our electricity is provided by an electric company being run by a cooperative. Every residential and commercial consumers have a meter installed for every home and for every business establishment respectively. The rate of electricity cost differs from each consumers. House electricity is paid lesser than a commercial building
I think prepaid electricity is a good idea, especially for people who would like to cost cut. Electricity in our country is too expensive, and many people can't afford solar power since it's more expensive as well. If one prefers prepaid electricity, I guess it's also important to have a normal source of electricity to use in case of emergency like for instance if you run out of money from your prepaid electricity, you can always use your normal electricity til you do a refill for your prepaid one
I thought we pay for as much as we consume apart from nominal monthly rental charges according to sanctioned load. Our government is also planning to provide us prepaid plans which should be even more consumer friendly. However, since the difference won't be much if consumers crossed their prepaid limit.
@explorerx7 This is how I used to use electricity in my previous location. You pay as you use. Very convinient I must say. The installation of meter was free of charge as it was transition that the government had adopted. You could monitor actively just what ate up your kilowatts.
There is always an appeal for me to try the pay as you go option, but for some reason I just fear that I will end up paying more in the long run due to my own error, so I just prefer the pay up front.
Prepaid electricity was just recently introduced here, but it seems not that popular. Also, if your electric bill consumption is quite little, then the government will subsidize it and you won't be charged by the electric company. I have personally experienced not being charged when I moved, so I think that is a better option than prepaid electricity.
If that is the pre-paid electric meter you are talking about, I made a personal research on it. The poor people in the slum area prefer that because they say it is better to have the electricity automatically cut off when the "load" is consumed instead of being cut off for non-payment of the bill because there is a penalty plus a reconnection fee. However, for the middle class and even the lower middle class who can afford to pay the bill and know how to manage the finances, that prepaid meter is very inconvenient.
Here in my state, we have fixed flat rate rent per month. Plus after specific usage there is meter reading. And it works out for each among us. Though the meter reading is done after specific threshold. So for typical low usage the monthly rent is kind of fixed. And its not easy to manage that type of the rent if the usage is higher. Because then bills will be higher too. So pay as you go is kind of good model but won't be applied here.
We have some kind of pay as you go electricity service. We have to pay minimum payment every month whether we use electricity or do not use electricity (in case we go for a vacation). We will have to pay for the minimum monthly units whether we use it or not. If we use more electricity, we will pay per unit. We pay more for more consumption.
I would need to see a cost benefit analysis to see if pay as you go electric is really worth it. I mean if it is something that could save you money in the long run I guess I would be for it. I just am not totally convinced that it would though. I guess I am not sure if it is the best option possible.