Question What do you pay for electricity & gasoline?

[N_Molson]

Also, the highest gasoline has ever been here is about $4/gal, a couple summers ago.

Hearing americans complaining about the gasoline prices is always a little unrealistic from Europe...

If I make the conversions, I pay the gallon $7.344

 

[Quick_Nick]

Hearing americans complaining about the gasoline prices is always a little unrealistic from Europe...

If I make the conversions, I pay the gallon $7.344

Yeah, I was shocked when I first learned of the prices in other countries a few years ago. But I imagine it's dealt with in a variety of ways. Here, $4/gal is difficult for a middle-class family. We do drive more than average though, and for some reason Texans (other than myself) feel the need to drive very large trucks, even if they are only driving themselves and not towing anything at all.
I even see one or two trucks comparable to this daily:

Interesting priorities...

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, if somebody goes to work in the USA by bike, I would say, people might consider him at least suicidal.

 

[kittu8320]

Hmm....in India.....for my 5 peoples family we are paying almost 1500 rs means almost 30 to 40 USD for electricity!!!

 

[Quick_Nick]

Well, if somebody goes to work in the USA by bike, I would say, people might consider him at least suicidal.

I see this occasionally, particularly within Houston. It's the fit, usually somewhat wealthier, health and environment-conscious ones who live closer to work that bike. (and also bike for leisure around Houston's parks) But the thousands to millions of people living outside of Houston have a long commute towards Houston that can only be done by driving along highways. And of course, there's the high number of obese people around here that wouldn't even attempt it, especially with our 110F summers.
But the USA is so large, everything varies everywhere. When someone from here visits New York, transportation takes some getting used to. We don't really use taxis, subways, or walking nearly as much as they do. It's rare to not own a car here.

 

[Urwumpe]

I see this occasionally, particularly within Houston. It's the fit, usually somewhat wealthier, health and environment-conscious ones who live closer to work that bike. But the thousands to millions of people living outside of Houston have a long commute towards Houston that can only be done by driving along highways. And of course, there's the high number of obese people around here that wouldn't even attempt it, especially with our 110F summers.

I can really feel Darwin revolving in his grave, when I read this... :lol:

It is survival of the fittest, not survival of the fattest.

 

[N_Molson]

Here, $4/gal is difficult for a middle-class family.

Same here, and probably worse. Everything is overexpensive in Europe, and this is getting more and more true with the so-called "debt-crisis". Middle-classes families begin to be in serious trouble.

Labor-classes, unemployed (10% and growing), part-time working students like me... Well, they survive. I'm currently living with an average of 4 sandwich-bread slices and 200g of rice or pasta each day. Luckily, it seems I'm not suffering from it and have even a few kilograms of margin. Having an "economic" physionomy is convenient there. And all you've heard about "French cuisine" and things like that... It's way over my budget, and fits in the "luxury" category for most people. I'm getting my food from LIDL, a German chain of discount supermarkets... :hmm:

 

[Urwumpe]

I'm getting my food from LIDL, a German chain of discount supermarkets... :hmm:

Well, Walmart already learned that the market for supermarkets in Germany is a real hell. :lol: They tried to be as American as possible, and failed epically. Now ALDI (South) is rolling up the American market.

I don't feel the debt crisis yet.

 

[TMac3000]

I can really feel Darwin revolving in his grave, when I read this... :lol:

It is survival of the fittest, not survival of the fattest.

That depends on what country you live in

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Everyone's postbit contains the flag of the user's country (if they pick it honestly...we have some Antarcticans creeping around here...) on the left of the screen. His is Germany's. :tiphat:

Not sure what you mean by postbit. I don't see any flags on the left of the screen. I recall I used to have U.S. and Massachusetts flags under my username, but they are not there anymore. Not sure why.

EDIT: NOW I can see the flags. I was flipping between pages and they popped back up. I wonder if it is some stupid Firefox page loading problem.

 

[Lucy]

Not sure what you mean by postbit. I don't see any flags on the left of the screen. I recall I used to have U.S. and Massachusetts flags under my username, but they are not there anymore. Not sure why.

I can still see them. And the postbit is the part of every post you make which contains your avatar and such things.

On-topic, we spend too much on both mains fuels, but nothing on petrol now since neither of us drive. I recall our last statement from the electricity company attempted to suggest we'd consumed 1,496kWh in five days, though, that was interesting... and of course that's about £150's worth of power. There's no way we used that much.

We're on pre-payment metering, still, sadly - which means weekly we'll pay £10 gas and £20 electricity, and won't wind up with much left, but the resulting unit price is skewed because prepayment metering is a rip-off which is full of additional charges. At the moment our unit prices should be about 15.1ppkWh for electricity, gas I'm not sure about.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

One interesting thing I am seeing as I read these posts is that those paying the highest rates for gasoline also provided numbers for their total usage (liters per week or month). If you asked an American how many gallons of gas they used in a week or a month they would have to stop and think about it.

In America it is very difficult in some areas to have a short commute to work. The city of Houston is about the size of the U.S. state of Rhode Island, and forget using public transit. It exists, but you would be spending the rest of your non-working hours riding a bus to get where you need to go. In the smaller cities of the East coast (NYC, Boston) they are much more amenable to public transit, but still many many people live outside the range of public transit and are forced to drive. Many who do use public transit have to drive a significant distance just to get to the transit lines.

It is a common condition that people who work in cities often do not make enough to LIVE in those cities, and are therefore forced to have a lengthy commute. With rising fuel prices, some people BOTH cannot afford to commute AND still can't afford to live in the cities. Many people are in the Catch-22 situation of going to work simply so they can afford to fill their gas tank at the end of the day. If that isn't a sign of an economy in decline, I don't know what is.

 

[FADEC]

Interesting question.

I can't speak of gasoline. I use public transportation.

As for electricity: I pay 38 € monthly. The basic charge of 5 Euro already is included. The 38 € monthly is for an annual consumption of 1,800 kilowatt hours for my single person household (a 55m² attic flat). But I use less.

My average daily consumption is about 4.7 kilowatt hours when I am at home (the powerful PC is running all the time) and less when I have to work of course. I don't have a TV which I think already saves some costs. I have a beamer but I use it for movies only on weekends (so a TV is dispensable in my case). The only thing which runs (on the lowest level) at night is the fridge. There are no standby devices running at all. Devices which I am using are on or off otherwise. And I don't have "electric" watches at home. Well, they are battery-driven. Since this is the orbiter forums those watches might be of some interest: it's the "kitchen timers" from CDN (Component Design Northwest) which NASA used as timers in the Shuttle flight decks:

http://www.cdn-timeandtemp.com/_img/products/pt1a-big.jpg

I have one on my desktop and one in the kitchen. Very useful for cooking.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Here is a bar chart with all of your responses for gasoline prices converted to US dollars per gallon. I realize that the numbers will vary somewhat within each country, but given that I think it is still an interesting chart.

 

[Quick_Nick]

I'd like to know more about other countries. I know that Australia anyhow has a much higher minimum wage. But something must balance that out.
I'm aware that even within the US, certain areas have a much higher cost of living to go along with their higher wages.

 

[Urwumpe]

I just come home from refueling my car...damn, had the prices increased in the past days:

169.9 cent per liter gasoline (95 octane, 5% ethanol) = 8.429012 USD per gallon.

Pretty painful now.

 

[Quick_Nick]

Gas is spiking towards $4/gal here as spring break begins. I drive about 50 miles (about 2 gallons) most weekdays, plus running errands.
It's something like 83 octane and 10% ethanol.

 

[Urwumpe]

Most cars here couldn't even consume 85 octane fuel anymore, all the turbocharged engines need 95 octane.

 

[Mantis]

We're paying about $1.29 per litre here these days which is actually quite obscene. Our sky high prices are caused by hypertaxation. Approximately 50% of the price we pay is tax. What really gets me ticked off is that in the United States, who imports most of their oil from Canada, they pay less for gas made from Canadian oil than we do!

As far as electricity goes....my current rate is between 6.2 and 10.8 cents per kWh depending on whether it's used during peak or off peak. My average combined electrical bill is usually around $50 per month

 

[Gr_Chris_pilot]

Here in Greece is 0.09 euro kW/h but paying 110 per month because we have 3 different taxes in it... You know crisis.... sometimes we have to pay ~500 euro within 2 months with only 100 euro real power consumption price because these taxes are changing by the time... wned:

Gasoline 95 oct 1.79 euro per liter (8.9$ per gallon)

And the basic salary is 480 euro... so this is why we have people losing houses and living in the streets every day.....

This is athens capital of Greece today.........