Green Tip – Reading Your Electricity Bill

Often times I've gone to look at my bills and not knowing how to read more than a few characters, any information that might've been important goes on the never ending To-Translate pile of stuff I'd like to know about this country, but will probably never get around to it.

Sound familiar?

Well, this month we take a look at Taipower electricity bills in an effort to de-mystify what you're looking at.

A) Top Right Corner – CO2 Emissions

    Pretty straight forward, this is a record of how much CO2 you're responsible for emitting in Kilograms.

Mine this month was 87 公斤/Kg

B) Middle Paragraph

    The main paragraph of Chinese on the front of the page simply says that if you are late, than you must   go down to Taipower in order to pay it.

    Some extra info here is that if you are late 2 days or less there's no extra charge.

If you are late 2 days to 2 weeks they will add 1% to your bill or 5NT (whichever is more).

If you are late longer than 2 weeks they will add 2% to your bill or 5NT (whichever is more).

C) Right Hand Chart

    This chart shows your meter reading for this period (本期） and last period （上其）.

    The difference between these numbers shows you how many kilowatt hours you used during this billing period.

    For example, this period for me 35411 – last period for me 35274. The difference is 137 Kw/h

D) Below the Chart (Right side middle)

    This is a simple adding together of your fee and discounts.

    流动电费 is your total bill

    if you have discounts they will appear below.

    If you used less power than last year, they will give you a small discount

E) Next to your total (middle of the page)

    First number (  is the minimum charge.

    The second number is how many Kilowatt hours (Kwh) you used during this period.

    The third number is how many days were in this period

    The fourth number is the amount in NT of your bill from last year at this time

    The fifth number is how many days were in this billing period last year

    The sixth number is the percentage you saved from 2 years ago to last year

    The seventh number is the percentage of power you saved from last year to this year

    The last number is how much you saved in NT from last year to this year

F) Left and Middle of Page

    Customer number

    The date of your present bill

    The date of your next bill

    The date the power company will come and read your meter

G) Equation

    This equation is the simple formula needed to calculate your bill

    You Pay (NT$) = rate (NT$/Kwh) x Electricity Usage (Kwh)

We hope this helps clear up some of the fog that's provided by the lack of Chinese reading ability.

Don't feel bad though if you can't read it, your students probably couldn't read it either.

For more information, www.taipower.com.tw has an English site with some great explanations and information for foreigners.