Codes of Living - 9

Finding the Monetary Equity of the Family's Electricity Need:

We are at home today, let's both place the furniture we bought and sit down and calculate our monthly electricity, water and natural gas costs. Let's look at the monthly expense of 12,670 lira, which we reached as a result of yesterday's calculation, let's see what the cost will be today.

I went through the old notebooks, at the beginning of this year, on February 1, I sat down and calculated the electricity need for a month. Those who are curious about the details can take a look at my Facebook page. I'll just give a brief summary today:

∆ 5 kWh Lamps (LED)

∆ 21 kWh Refrigerator

∆ 31 kWh Iron

∆ 21 kWh Television

∆ 16 kWh Vacuum cleaner

∆ 20 kWh Electric oven

∆ 10 kWh Dishwasher

∆ 5 kWh Washing machine

∆ 6 kWh Hair dryer

∆ 5 kWh Tablets, mobile phones

∆ 10 kWh Kitchen appliances

∆ 20 kWh Combi (when it works in winter, it consumes 30~45 kWh electricity besides natural gas)

In fact, they said on the internet that an average family's monthly electricity consumption is 250~280 kWh, but assuming we use it very economically, let's say our total expenditure is minimum 170 kWh, as we have detailed above. If we do not use the lamps energy saving, the additional 50 kWh comes from the lamps alone.

With the latest hikes, electricity for residences has increased from low tariff to 1.70 lira/kWh for spending up to 210 kWh. 2.06 lira/kWh with an increase of 125% over 210 kWh.

Our account costs 290 liras per month at a low tariff.

I wish the lady had chosen the gas type oven, we would have used a little less electricity. Although those types were more expensive. In any case, we would have to pay the electricity bill up front.

Our Natural Gas Expense:

Now that we've taken care of the electricity, let's come to our heating problem, our natural gas costs.

Fortunately, there is a combi boiler in the house we rented, heating is one of the biggest problems.

We used to live in a house with a stove when I was a kid. Wood is one problem, coal is another. As if it is not enough to carry wood coal to the stove all the time, there is also ash, when you open the stove's lid, the smoke escapes into the room, the inside of the house smells smoky, and especially if the chimney does not draw well, it smokes from all the pipe connections in the morning.

When the stove has a bucket, you will also lift all your heavy buckets and place them in the stove.

Coal sacks are also very heavy. My lower back pain is due to the coal sack I once lifted in my childhood. I remember the sound of forty coming from my waist as if it happened today. It's healed now though, but if I make any sudden movements without paying attention, it will recur every now and then.

If we lived in a house with charcoal, now we would have to pay a minimum of 2,500 liras per ton of oak wood. There are also some that cost 3,500 liras per ton, depending on the region. If we say 75 lira for a sack and 20 kilos for a sack of wood with a sack calculation, a ton would be 3,750 liras. Let's say the share of breakage and convenience, those who buy the sack pay more.

One ton of domestic coal was on average 4,400 liras. If we say 25 kilos in terms of the bag, it is 110 liras for the bag. Imported coals are more expensive, between 6,500~7,500 liras per ton.

It varies according to the region, but in winter, one ton of wood and one and a half tons of coal is probably enough. For one winter, we would have had a minimum cost of 9,100 lira for two. It is also for cities like Istanbul, which we can call more or less mild weather conditions. In cold cities like Erzurum in the east, at least twice as much is spent. If we say that this is our one-year expenditure, if we were heating with charcoal, we would have to add an average of 760 liras of heating expenses per month.

But we have a combi boiler, we don't deal with it like charcoal.

At the beginning of June, the price of 1000 m3 natural gas in the spot market was 12 thousand 153 liras and 23 cents. It changes every day. Also, since it is priced in dollars, the more the exchange rate increases, the more the exchange rate difference increases. The result is raise, raise, raise. Let's not dive into spot market prices now. In today's conditions, according to the international conjuncture, we do not know how much we buy the gas for, as the public, it is a trade secret. But natural gas comes from Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan. Most likely, the price is lower than the spot market price, thanks to pre-contracted contracts.

If the price was the same as the spot market, it would be 12 liras and 15 kurus per cubic meter at the beginning of June. The gas price we use in our houses is well below this. So the state gives a lot of support for housing. They probably get the difference from their workplaces and industry. Support, but to what extent, gratuitous support means printing money, which is inflation.

In fact, it doesn't matter, one way or another, the price of everything is circulating, it is removed from the end consumer. The industrialist does not pay the difference out of his pocket, he wears the goods he produces, and the cost of the goods increases. The end consumer is generally low-income with us anyway. Hit it like a clown, constantly raise.

People have gotten used to the price hikes, they even made a caricature of it. The citizen, who was hospitalized because there is no raise today, turned out to be addicted to the raise. I laughed so much when I saw it.

When we extract our own gas, our dependence on foreign sources will decrease to some extent, but drilling under kilometers of water in the sea is not easy and extracting gas from such a deep depth is quite costly. Let's see if the cost will fall below the price we bought from outside, and we will see. Also, the quality of the gas and the processing it can be used, it's all cost. Let's see what the price will be.

Let's get back to our account.

Prices for residences with June 2022 hikes:

∆ 4.27 lira per cubic meter in the annual consumption range of 0~100,000 m3,

∆ 4.07 lira per m3 in the annual consumption range of 100,000~1,000,000 m3.

This second price means a minimum of 8.333 m3 gas per month and this lower limit is well above our monthly requirement. They probably thought of a slightly more discounted price for apartments that are heated with a central boiler. Our expenditure should be much lower, as it will be with a combi boiler and only for a single flat.

Let's see how much gas a standard boiler burns. We have added the electricity consumed by the circulation pump to our electricity calculation above, we will only look at the gas consumption.

For a comfortable environment, the room temperature should be 20°C. In the houses we live in, there is constant heat loss in winter from the windows and walls. In summer, on the contrary, the heat of the outside enters in the same ways. In order to minimize this heat loss or entry, we can have special heat-impermeable glasses installed on our windows. It is necessary to insulate the walls and roof as well. But it's all cost. Since we do not have a standard, we do not pay attention to such issues so that only the contractor's account and construction costs are kept to a minimum. However, if they make the cost calculation by taking into account the usage period, it will be understood that the insulation actually reduces the cost considerably.

Yes, in our conditions, the combi boiler temperature is usually kept at 50°C and the monthly gas consumption is around 300 m3 per month from 10 m3 per day.

This means 1,281 liras per month, from 4.27 liras per cubic meter. We don't burn combi all year round. But we usually use the combi boiler for heating for a total of five months, on low settings, from the beginning of November to the end of March. If we count November and March at half capacity, we can think that the combi boiler operates at full capacity four months a year. So this means 1200 m3 of gas. In other months, if we say 300 m3 additionally for hot water need and use in the stove, it is 1500 m3 per year. Its price is 4 liras and 27 cents per year, that is 6405 liras in 12 months.

The monthly average is 535 liras.

Energy Sources Cause Air Pollution

Surprise, natural gas came out cheaper than charcoal. It's actually better this way. We did not leave a forest. Coal also causes a lot of air pollution. I remember in the past, sooty smoke would settle over the city.

In terms of carbon emissions, both make no difference. Even if electricity is cheap, if everything was electric. I think we need to find a way to make electricity cheaper.

The best thing to do is to work a little harder and develop a new technology. We can be inspired by nature. Nature uses sunlight as an energy source. We should do the same. I'm not talking about solar panels, I'm talking about storing energy directly from the sun.

Something is being done, although not yet enough, to convert various energy sources into electrical energy.

In our country, it is very ideal to use both solar, wind, geothermal and wave energy.

These energies are both clean and have a low carbon footprint.

That's all good, but what I'm talking about is storing the generated energy, the problem is energy storage. We really need to find a solution to this. I'm talking about alternating current, not direct current. Batteries are being developed with some chemicals for direct current. Most electric vehicles run on these batteries. But when it comes to alternative energy, it is not so easy to store it. There are some methods. I'll talk about it in another post later.

Let's get back to our topic. In the meantime, one last reminder for natural gas, of course, we may have to use consumer loans to spread the monthly expenditure amount during the winter months throughout the year. But we will add to our own account on the monthly average.

We have left water. Water expense is calculated as spent water + 50% waste water cost. The price each municipality receives for water varies according to its own cost calculation.

With the latest presidential decree, the VAT for water has been reduced to 1%, but the VAT rate for waste water has been left at 8%. Account and tariff prices are a bit mixed. There are prices of 0~16 m3 and above 16 m3, there are special prices for some regions, there is a part that is paid for free. It's not easy to get out of. When there is so much water in the world, it is very ironic that the price is paid for it, with mixed penny calculations.

A person consumes an average of 120~250 liters of water per day, the monthly average of a family of four is 22 tons and 200 liters. Considering the baby and the child, let's take the first level limit of 16 tons as a basis and simply calculate m3 from 10 liras. Our monthly cost is 160 lira.

To summarize:

∆ 2,300 liras of accommodation,

∆ 8,550 pounds of nutrition,

∆ 1,820 TL installment of goods

    √ 290 TL electricity

    √ 160 TL water+waste water

    √ 535 lira natural gas

∆ 985 lira electricity, water and gas

Monthly total: 13,655 lira.

Conclusion

Yes, that's enough for today. We'll look at the remaining needs tomorrow.

I'll go and help the lady a little bit, she says hold on to the end of the job, she's whining inside to see if I'm going to put everything in. As if I wanted all that stuff, just one TV and one chair are enough for me to watch the match. I already set it up overnight.

But we haven't made the internet connection yet, we don't have internet yet. Let's take a look at that subject tomorrow. Let's go get our mobile phones, open our lines, connect our internet.

I should have bought a rocking chair in front of that TV.

Love and regards from Moscow