Electric Bills

My home state in the U.S. is Texas. Per this website (Click Here), the average electrical rate for the first 1000 Kilowatt hours used from a Texas electrical provider will cost you about $.10 cents per kilowatt hour. In Mexico the first 900 kilowatt hours for a private residence will run you about $.07 cents per KWH. Electricity is cheaper to use in Mexico as long as you keep it below 900 KWH's. This is easy to do if you don't have A/C. But it is difficult to live here without A/C if you live inland in Merida or on the cities outskirts. And A/C usage is what makes up about 75% of your electrical bill here.

• Note to the Reader: If you live on the beach then you almost never need A/C. It is always 10 to 15 degrees cooler on the beach. The air that blows off the coastal waters are consistently brisk and carry with them lower temperatures that are always welcome.

The rate hike per KWH hours after your first 900 KWH's is what will get you on your electric bill in Mexico. After 900 KWH's the rate jumps over three times to 2.529 pesos per KWH hour. In dollars that runs about $.21 cents per KWH, over three times the amount charged for the first 900 hours. And we find that when we use our A/C's from April to September we end up using about another 1400 KWH's per billing cycle. That's an additional $150 USD per month.

Now electric bills are paid here every 2 months, not every month. So you only get 6 bills per year. But your bill can run you $500 USD or more, depending on your electric usage, for a span of 2 months.

Now here is another kicker. Every bill that you receive from CFE has a government discount that runs about 25% of your bill on average. That is a good thing. You get this discount as long as you use less than 850 KWH's per month for the past 12 months. That means that if on your electric bill you averaged less than 1700 KWH's per bill (remember you are billed every two months), then you get this roughly 25% discount from the government. However, if you start to average more than 1700 KWH's of usage for the past 12 months then you lose this discount on your next bi-monthly bill. And you will continue to miss out on this discount on all future bills until you cut back on your consumption to get your previous 12 month rolling average back below 1700 KWH's of usage per bill.

Does that make sense? In other words, make sure you average less than 1700 KWH's per every 2 months for the last 6 bills you received. From October to March this is not a problem. But from April to September it gets very hot and humid. And if you live inland and you are home alot it is difficult to enjoy your day when you are sweating all the time.

On our last bill we went over the 1700 KWH average for the year and hit an average of 1735 KWH per billing cycle. When we got the bill it was for roughly $700 USD. The highest bill we had every paid was for April/May of this year for $525 USD. When we saw the June/July bill we were hitting the brakes trying to figure out what was happening. In response to this I have since found that some Mexican families actually sleep in the same room during the hotter months so they can run only one A/C to offset these expenses.

Saludos,
JEB