Today a couple of electricity-related things.... first, the mail had a letter (in a plastic envelope, grrrr) from Meridian which said they were "puzzled" by our monthly reading on Sep 24th for a total of 500kWh and they were sending their bean counter around to read our meter again.  But the letter wasn't clear on whether they thought our usage had veered into "puzzling" on the high or the low side of expected usage.  Puzzled by this myself (and with a dim hope we had befuddled Meridian by being spectacularly frugal with our energy use!), I accessed my old Contact energy account to look up last year's online bills. I used 535kWh in August 07. A 35kWh drop didn't seem that remarkable. Oh, well. Just then, the meter reader showed up and his reading today basically confirmed that last Wednesday's reading was correct.  So he too joined the ranks of the puzzled.

Secondly, Contact Energy is in the news for putting up their prices 12% which is causing howls of protest.  TV3's evening news had a sound byte from an advocate for the aged, who said that the price rises were particularly bad for the elderly, who will be forced to take to their beds earlier than usual with their electric blankets "as an alternative to keeping warm".  From personal experience, I can attest that a bed with an electric blanket is a very effective method to keep warm, not an alternative to keeping warm.  I tried it myself this winter and never needed to switch on the fan heater at all, I was that warm... this is why I got my hopes up that we had a meter reading so low it would actually raise a red flag in Meridian's system.