5 ways to divide the electricity bill between roommates
With power prices skyrocketing, now’s the time not just to review your energy provider and deal, but also to make sure that your share house is splitting the bill fairly. The heater on? In this economy!?
Getty Images
There are a few different ways to consider splitting electricity bills, and the one that’s best for you will depend on the makeup of your household. That includes whether flatmates work from home or have a hobby that uses a lot of power (for example, gaming), but you might also need to consider the spaces each person rents and the appliances they use in those spaces.
With any luck, one of these five bill-splitting options will jump out as the best one for your household.
1. The equal split
The simplest approach (although not necessarily the fairest) is to split the bill equally between the people in the house. If you’re all home about the same amount of time, and you all use things like heating, cooling, washers and dryers roughly the same amount, this is the obvious solution. And if you split the rent and other bills evenly between yourselves, it probably makes sense to do the same with your power.
When doesn’t it make sense? When you know that some housemates are home a lot more than others, perhaps because some work from home and others don’t. It may also seem unfair if some flatmates have appliances like portable heaters (or gaming computers or consoles; electronic musical instruments; fish tanks with pumps, heaters and lights; and so on) that others don’t, and don’t use. At that point, it might be best to look at other options.
How it works
If you have four people in your share house, divide the bill by 4. Each person pays 25% of the total, so on a $100 bill that’s $25 each. Simple!
2. Work-from-home housemates pay the difference
If you work from home but your flatmate doesn’t, you’re likely using more power than they are. It’s only fair that you foot the bill, especially since you’re using the power to earn!
One way to do this is to compare the power bills from the time before you worked from home with the power bills you’re getting now. Ideally, you’d compare bills from the same months in the before- and after-WFH years. If that’s not possible, you can always compare bills before and after you started working from home to get a sense of the extra percentage you should pay (although keep in mind that seasonal changes can affect power usage, too, so don’t compare a summer will with a winter one, for example). If your power company has an hourly usage tracker, that can help you narrow down the extra power you’re using, too, although of course it will count things like fridges and routers, which are likely on all the time, whether anyone’s home or not.
Two tips to keep in mind if you’re splitting the bill this way: first, omit the daily supply charge from your tally, since everyone in the household needs to cover an equal share of that part of the bill. And second, keep a record of the extra you’re paying so that you can claim it against your income at tax time.
How it works
Compare bills from the same billing periods in the year before your flatmate started working from home, and the year after they did. If you haven’t been living together that long, take the last bill before the person began working from home and compare it with the one that followed. You should be able to get a sense of the extra power used, and calculate a rough percentage the at-home worker should pay on top of their normal share.
3. The 25% method
If someone in your household spends the daytime at home, perhaps because they’re working or studying from home, then this might be a good way to divvy up the power bill. It’s based on the percentage of extra time the at-home people are in the house, which, over 5 out of 7 days a week, amounts to around 25%.
The thinking here is that a day can be broken into three segments that each account for 33% of power usage: sleeping, daytime, and downtime. In this method, the at-home flatmates pay for 5/7ths of the daytime power usage (or 24%, which we’ve rounded up to 25%).
How it works
Let’s imagine your bill is $600 and it’s to be divided between 3 flatmates. That amounts to $200 each. But one person works from home, so we add 25% of their share (that’s an extra $50) to their bill: now it’s $250. The remaining $350 of the bill is divided equally between the 2 flatmates who don’t work from home, so they pay $175 each.
4. Track your usage
There are two ways to think about tracking your power usage. The first is to use your power company’s app (if they have one) to track total household power usage by the hour or day. If they don’t have this kind of tracking? Consider buying an energy monitor that tracks usage across your whole home. This kind of tracking can give you a clear picture of when usage peaks and bottoms out at your place — which can help you work out who’s using the power.
But wait! There’s more: you can also track the usage of each appliance at your place with a plug-in power meter. This can be helpful if, say, your fishing-fanatic flatmate has a freezer full of her catch humming away in the garage, and you’re suss that it’s chewing through the kWhs. The third option might be handy if your housemate holes up in their room day after day with the portable heater and a state-of-the-art surround-sound system and you have a hunch they’re using more than their share of the power. It’s a switchboard sub-meter which, while it’s more expensive than a plug-in power meter, effectively tracks usage on a circuit in your home. Once you know who, or which appliances, are pulling power, you can divide up the bill accordingly (and cut down usage of the power-hungry appliances if you need to).
How it works
Track the usage as you want to: for the household, certain appliances, or circuits. Take the next bill that comes in and work out what percentage of your household power usage can be attributed to those appliances, circuits, or people’s presence in the house at certain times. Then, add that percentage to those flatmate’s shares. So, imagine your roomie’s gaming computer accounts for 8% of your household power usage. If the usage total is $100, that means their computer uses $8 of power. Subtract that from the $100 to get $92, then divide that figure by two (for each of you): it’s $46. This is your share. Add the 8 to 46 to get their share: $54.
5. Add a percentage for a partner
The other way to split the bill is useful if someone in the household has a partner who stays over, say, 3 or more days a week, including the weekends. As a couple, they may use a little more power than flatmates who don’t have partners over, so between you, you might negotiate that they pay a little extra to cover that cost: maybe 5% or 10% of the usage charge on each bill, depending on how often the partner stays, and whether it’s just for evenings, or whole days.
Of course if you want to be more scientific about how much they should pay, tracking usage to work out the specific difference the partner makes is your best bet.
How it works
In your house shared by three people, you’ve agreed that your flatmate, whose partner stays one or two nights during the week and each weekend, will pay 40% of the bill, and you and your other flatmate will pay the remainder (60% divided by the two of you, so 30% each). On a $100 bill, your coupled-up flattie pays $40, while you and your other flatmate pay $30 each.
