Dear readers, recently I received my April 2020 electricity, water and gas bill. Before opening the envelope containing the bill, I have already expected that the utilities bill is going to be high. Inevitably so in view of the Covid-19 Stay Home Circuit Breaker measure. But when I read the bill, I was very surprised. Surprised because April 2020 utilities bill is the highest that I have to pay for my household to date! Utility bills as a whole went north by 34.5% compared to the average utility bill which I pay!
What has driven up the utility bill was electricity consumption for my family with an increase of 35.5% compared to March 2020. Gas and Water services went up 13.3% and 11.5% respectively!
The higher Apr 2020 electricity bill is inevitable notwithstanding that everyday I do my best to reduce the consumption of electricity and water for my family. For example, optimising the numbers of hours of air-conditioning at night (the aircon is not switched on during the day). And I also practise collecting as much of water during bath for flushing the toilet bowl (strongly recommend to everyone since why pay for flushing away our bodily waste using clean water?)
However, since Apr 2020 is a Circuit Breaker month, I understand that the electricity consumption reading is really an estimate by my service provider rather than actual readings taken. Hence there could be a possibility that my electricity bill increment for April 2020 may not be as high as what was calculated. I guess I could only know whether the above is the case in subsequent months’ utility bills (to see whether an “offset” for Apr 2020 bills will be applied).
On the other hand, I have not switched my electricity supply provider to one of those commercial entities. For a period of time, I have done much research but somehow the momentum seems to be lost thereafter. Perhaps it is time to expedite on this front with commuting from home likely to continue post circuit-breaker (which should hence still drive electricity bills up).