Best way to manage utilities

[prl]

I'm on a supply charge plus fixed kWh price for my electricity. But my 
supplier also has two other plans that have tiered pricing as you 
describe (they're only economic for people whose electricity consumption 
is higher than mine). The same supplier also has time-of-day pricing for 
electricity, so it's definitely not a scheme restricted to phone 
pricing. It would get even more complicated if I was on a solar feed-in 
plan.

My natural gas and water charges are also tiered by quarterly usage.

I track phone & ISP costs, water usage, home energy use and home CO2 
emissions in my utilities spreadsheet. I compare my actual electricity 
costs against the cost I would pay if I had time-of-day pricing instead 
(the difference has never been more than $2.50/quarter in either 
direction). I just use an estimate based on the previous year+10% for 
utility costs in my budget/planning spreadsheet (I never liked the 
Gnucash budgeting system).

Peter

On 2/05/2014 03:05, Ian Konen wrote:
> ...
> Another point is that pricing of utilities is often more complicated
> than price per unit.  Again, I only have a local perspective, so maybe
> things are simpler in Italy, but my electric bill here has tiered
> pricing: after a certain number of kWh used each month, the price per
> kWh changes.  There might be utilities that change rate as a function
> of the time of day (maybe I'm only thinking of phone bills, but it
> stands to reason utilities might implement peak pricing).
>
> Long story short, I don't know if the conversion from amount used to
> price is beyond the capability of entering into a GnuCash formula, but
> I do think it's more complicated than share prices and currency
> exchange rates.  I'd add another vote to the "use a spreadsheet"
> column if you really want to understand the relationship between your
> usage and your bill, or if you're just trying to track your total
> usage, and use the price only as an decent approximation of your usage
> in GnuCash if you're trying to plan your budget or looking for ways to
> cut expenses.